Sorry this one took an extra day guys but it was emotional and a hard one to write. if you want a good soundtrack for the chapter, listen to Again to Drift by Black Tape for a Blue Girl. (I dont own that either)
Chapter 15
He could hear the door creak very slightly as it swished open, but Renji didn't bother to look. He couldn't tear his eyes from the small form in the bed barely clinging to life. His Ippin was hooked up to her least favorite machine again, but the ventilator pushing air in and out of her lungs was the only thing keeping her alive at this point.
Renji put his head in his hands as he replayed that morning over again in his head for the millionth time. He had woken up curled behind Mara like normal, but she didn't stir when he said good morning, or when he kissed her cheek… or when he shook her and yelled her name. He could physically feel his heart slide into his stomach as he went careening through the hospital looking for Ishida or Orihime, screaming for help from them but no one could hear him in his Shinigami form.
He had finally found Orihime walking up to the hospital about to begin her day and he had literally grabbed her and flash stepped her up to Mara's room. Ippin still hadn't moved by that point. Orihime had leapt into action, taking her vitals and hitting the call button for the nurses on her floor, before running screaming into the hallway as well, but she was actually followed in by a team of people. While they had stripped the bed and brought in equipment, Orihime had called Ishida on his private line and ordered him to the hospital.
In what seemed like hours, but was only minutes, Ishida had run into the room at full tilt. The good doctor hadn't even gotten his shirt buttoned or coat on before running to check on the girl who had found her place amongst them and that he now considered a friend. He began shouting orders at the nurses of bags to bring and additional IVs to run before checking everything again, from pulse to pupil dilation.
He had advised Renji to step out and breathe for a second while they set up her room so Renji went to Urahara's and put on his gigai before sprinting back in under a minute, the blonde man yelling after him. He had to make sure that, if anything changed, he could flag someone down this time. He had thought it was a wise decision when, just a couple hours later, Mara had started to move in the bed. Renji had jumped to her side to see her eyes wide open and body twitching, lips tinged with blue.
Nurses, followed closely by Ishida, had run in and shoved him from the bed, shouting wildly and getting the ventilator tube in her mouth. As soon as she was stable again, her heartbeat ticking away in a mechanical beep on the screen, Renji had rushed back up to her side, just in time to wipe warm tears from her cold cheeks. He had stilled when Ishida came up to the other side of the bed and closed her unfocused eyes.
"What's going to happen?" Renji had asked, pleading, "She's going to be okay, right? Do you have to put those damn straps on the bed again?"
Ishida had sighed and leaned his hands on the bed rail, looking long and pensively at Renji before answering. "She doesn't need the restraints, Renji."
Renji had shaken his head in confusion, panic clouding his thoughts. "But you said-"
"I know," Ishida said slowly, "but she is not going to wake up this time, my friend. That was a seizure brought on by lack of oxygen and… and loss of brain activity. She's gone."
"NO!" Renji had yelled, "No. She was crying! She has to still be here to cry! It probably hurts or something!"
"Abarai, that was the body's reflex to not breathing," Ishida tried to explain, "She isn't feeling or thinking anything. She is on life support now and is considered brain dead. If you look at that monitor, it's showing no-"
"Get out."
"What? Abarai, we have to talk about her wishes and what this means," Ishida had tried to convince him.
"Get the fuck out, Quincy!" Renji had roared at him, "She will wake up! And I will sit here and make damn sure she gets the chance to."
For two days, Renji hadn't moved from his post watching over her. Neither enemy nor friend could pry him away from the macabre hypnosis of watching Mara's chest rise and fall. He held her hand in silence, only moving out of the way for the nurses tending the spider's web of tubes and nodes that kept her here with him. Wrapped in the sheet with all the wires running from her, and with her normal pale complexion taking on a gray pallor, she looked like the prey caught in the middle of the web.
Renji heard the door creak shut again and Ishida's all-too-familiar footsteps making their way to the other side of the bed as he sat down across from Renji. He didn't say anything, waiting for the distraught red-head to look up at him. Renji wouldn't give him the satisfaction.
"What?" he growled out, the heels of his hands still pressed to his eyes.
"It's been two days. We need to talk about her, Abarai," Ishida replied softly, voice hoarse with emotion that he brutally kept in check.
"What about it? It's only been two days. You have coma patients in here going on 10 years, so what is there to talk about?" he rumbled back.
"The issue isn't if we can keep her alive like this," Ishida sighed, "It's that Mara didn't want us to."
Renji finally raised red-rimmed eyes to the man across from him. "And how would you know that?" he asked acidly.
"Because Mara signed forms making it very clear she wanted to move on," Ishida replied, seemingly unperturbed by Renji's malicious tone, "She requested not to be kept alive like this, "like a vegetable" to use her words. I have to disconnect the machines and honor her wish to die with dignity."
Renji's eyes widened in shock. "Your going to WHAT!?" he gasped out.
"I don't understand why this shocks you," Ishida said softly, pushing up his glasses to examine Renji more closely, "This was always her plan; to die and go to Soul Society to be with you. Wasn't this something you had both planned out?"
"Our plans didn't include you killing her!" Renji yelled at Ishida, standing to tower over him, but Ishida rose to face him nearly eye to eye.
"She is already dead, Abarai," he responded much more calmly than he felt. "All we are doing is operating a glorified gigai that is keeping her soul trapped here. Why do you not want to let this happen as she planned? As you both planned?!"
"Get out, Ishida, and don't come back. Find her a better doctor than you," Renji snarled at his, muscles tensed to rend Ishida limb from limb.
"That's not going to work this time, Abarai," Ishida said cooly, "I'm legally not allowed to keep her alive past her wishes any longer, and any doctor will tell you the same. I will give you one more hour with her, but then I have to pull the plug."
Renji thumped back down in the chair, reaching for Mara's hand again as he turned his face to the wall to hide the tears that threatened to spill in front of the Quincy. Ishida, giving him the privacy he needed, headed out the door and closed it behind him.
In the hallway, Ishida finally took a deep breath as he slumped against the wall outside the door. He pulled his glasses off to wipe the sleep deprivation and emotion from his eyes before he had to slide his "doctor smile" back on in the next room. While he couldn't imagine the depth of Renji's loss, it was hard to try to keep his own level of grief at a distance to do his job. Mara hadn't wanted to live like this, but he knew that releasing her from her body was going to be taking his own life in his hands with Renji in the room, ready to kill anyone who dared even think about touching her.
A small hand appeared on Ishida's arm in his view, and he immediately lifted it to his lips and took a calming breath. "You okay?" Orihime asked him gently.
"I will be," he responded hoarsely, looking into the light brown eyes that soothed his soul on days like this. He couldn't fathom if they were shut forever, he thought as his mind drifted to the man on the other side of the door. But this had to be done. Besides, death would just be a new beginning for those two, he decided. "Hime, we are going to have to call Sado for this. He is not going to let us…"
"I figured as much," Orihime sighed out, "I already called him."
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"Sado," Ishida greeted the tall man as he approached him at the end of the hallway, "Took you long enough."
"Had to stop home and change," Sado's low voice rumbled back, gesturing to his bare arms in the torn off Hawaiian shirt, "I'm tired of ruining clothes."
Ishida snorted in response, a grin curling his lips even though there was no happiness behind it. "I hava a feeling we may both be ruining clothes today no matter what."
"It's that bad, huh?"
"Yeah," Ishida answered nodding, "We are a little lucky though. Not only is his rietsu capped by Soul Society, but his gigai dampens it as well… it's still going to be hard. I was hoping you could go in and talk to him and get him away from the bed, then I can use hirenkyaku to dash to the controls while you hold him back."
Sado's eyes widened a fraction at Ishida's plan, but he nodded silently.
A soft gasp had both men turning to see Orihime, eyes wide and beginning to brim with unshed tears. "You two act like you are going into battle against an enemy," she wimpered.
Both men lowered their eyes and Ishida turned away, unsure how to respond. "Worse," Sado said lowly, "Apparently we have to against a friend."
Orihime sniffled, trying to hold back unshed tears, before running down the hallway and away from view around the corner.
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Ichigo kept to the shadows of the hallway, silently moving around the edges as he crept forward. He could hear Sado and Ishida discussing something but at this point it was just a rumble of voices.
He didn't know why he had followed Sado when he saw him running towards the hospital. Maybe old habits were just hard to break. Maybe he was just a glutton for punishment. Ichigo knew this feeling of watching and wondering, of feeling ultimately left out and viewed as weak. It was how he had spent the last years of high school, and it was what he had spent most of his college and med school years trying to escape. So why am I here lurking, hoping to see something that I know I can't see?
Ichigo shook his head at himself before walking forward again, finding himself peeking around the corner of a familiar hallway. This is where my dad was… He could now see Ishida and Sado, head to head, in a discussion outside one of the doors. Her door. The girl that could see like he had. Ichigo was unable to fight his curiosity, and so continued his slow creep up the hallway to try and catch their conversation, but he stumbled over something in his way up against the wall.
"Shit!" he exclaimed in a whisper as he caught himself just before landing on the huddled person there. Wide, light brown eyes, made red with tears, looked up at him in surprise. "Inoue?"
"Kurosaki-kun," she said hoarsely," what are you- Oh crap! What are you doing here?!"
"Um-" Ichigo racked his brain for an excuse other than 'sneaking', "I came to apologize for the other day. Just being back, you know, makes me on edge. I just wanted to say sorry."
Orihime looked at her old friend with warmth before she realized that Ichigo was here in the hallway where an enraged Shinigami was about to let loose. "Thank you, Kurosaki-kun," she said quickly, "but you can't be here. You need to go."
Looking at her in confusion, Ichigo wondered why. Was there a hollow or something that had sent Sado here in a sprint and she didn't want him hurt? "What's going on, Inoue? Does it have to do with the girl in that room?! I need to talk to her! She may know how-"
"She's gone, Ichigo. She slipped into a coma two days ago and they have to disconnect life support, and Renji-kun…. You just need to go," Orihime whispered as she curled back into her ball on the floor, pressing her back to the wall.
"So she was with Abarai! I knew it! … Wait. I needed to know how- she has answers to how I can see them again! She can't be dead!"
Orihime turned angry, tear-filled eyes up at the tall man next to her as she wrapped her arms around her knees. "She is gone, Kurosaki-kun. I have lost a friend and am about to lose another. She can't talk to you. She can't answer questions. You need to leave now."
Caught off guard by her forcefulness, Ichigo stood just staring at Orihime for a moment before were knocked out of their internal musings by the sound of the handle unlatching. They looked up in time to see Sado walk into Mara's room.
"Oh no," Orihime whispered, as the low murmur of greeting dissipated nearly instantly, and the walls of the hospital began to shake.
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Sado entered the room to see Renji still next to the bed, still holding her hand. He didn't bother looking up as Sado entered, instead just tightening his grip on Mara and bowing his head.
"I'll kill you if you come any closer, and I really don't want to kill you, Sado," Renji said lowly, the realness of his threat clear in his tone. "I know Ishida put you up to this."
Sado stood still, taking in Renji's haggard appearance. "I don't want to fight you, my friend."
"Good," Renji said, sitting up to lean back in his chair as he levelled a hard gaze at the large man, "Then get out."
"No."
Renji's eyes narrowed into a death stare. He gently kissed the back of Mara's hand before carefully placing it back on her lap and slowly rising from his chair. Standing to his full height, Renji's rietsu began to swirl up around him, more oozing out with each step he took as he rounded the end of the bad. "I thought you said you didn't want to fight," he hissed out in a deceptively calm tone.
"I don't, but I will if I have to. It's time to let her move on, Renji," Sado said sadly.
"NO!" Abarai yelled, flaring with spiritual pressure as the walls began to shake. "Don't you dare-"
His yell was cut off by a strong right hook that flung him into the wall. He looked up to see Sado's arms encased in black and white and red. Renji pushed himself off the wall, ducking under the next blow and reaching to grab Sado under the chin. He didn't stop his momentum, using it to carry the big man backwards before slamming him by the head into the ground.
"I said, don't-"
Renji was knocked off Sado's body by a flash of white and thrown back into the far wall. "Stop this, Abarai!" Ishida yelled as he lifted Renji forward to slam him back into the wall, trying to buy Sado the time to get up. "She wanted to move on to be with you! Why are you doing this?"
Renji answered him with a head butt that sent Ishida reeling as he made to leap back toward the bed, but he was tackled in the midsection with the force of a freight train. Sado bulldozed the Shinigami into the wall across from the bed again, hitting it hard enough to crack it.
Renji rained blows down upon his back as Sado fitted his hands into cracks in the wall, hoping he could simply hold Renji there long enough for Ishida to work.
Ishida took a step toward the framework of machines as Renji realized his blows were doing nothing. He knew he couldn't rely on kido as there was a chance he could kill Mara too in the small space, but he had to get away, had to get to Ishida. Renji's mind flashed the Mara's shocked face that first time she had begun to see Rietsu. "You can take down the hospital?"
Renji let his rietsu build, stilling for a second in Sado's hold as he could feel the power build up in him. He realized his mistake now with the gigai and Soul Society's rules but he didn't care. He knew he could at least bring down the wall that he was pinned against. Renji's eyes glowed red as he looked at Ishida, who had paused to look back and see what was going on as the wall behind him began to shatter.
"God Dammit, Abarai!" Ishida roared, running back to where Sado held him. "I didn't want to have to do this!" Ishida pulled a long metal piece from his cape, pressing it to Renji who could feel himself getting weaker by the second.
The asshole was siphoning his rietsu, the way he had siphoned Orihime's for the cure. Fucking Quincy should not be allowed to mess with his own weapons. Renji ranted in his head as he flailed against Sado. He threw everything he had into hits against both men until Ishida retreated back towards the machines and something in Renji just… broke.
As Ishida clamped the IV tubes, Renji reached out towards him with a free hand. He couldn't fight the sob in his voice. "Please."
As he prepared to turn off the ventilator and nodes, Ishida turned stunned eyes to the end of the room where only the sounds of silence remained.
"Please, Ishida, please don't do this. What if- what if I can't find her again?"
Fighting his own emotion, Ishida levelled his eyes with Renji and recognized the fear there. "You will. You can have teams of people searching if you need. You know that. Why are you so scared to let this happen?"
Renji snarled, bearing his teeth to push again, before it got choked into a sob. "What if she won't love me again!?" he finally yelled. "The only thing that is sure is right now, and right now she loves me. I am her world and she is mine and what if- what if it goes away? What if I can't bring it back? Please, Ishida, Please…" he finished in a whisper.
Ishida's own vision blurred as he reached down to Mara's left hand, flipping it over to expose the tattoo on her wrist. His tattoo. "Find a way, Abarai," he said tonelessly as he lifted his hand again and flipped the switch.
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Ichigo stood in the hallway next to Orihime as people streamed through the hallway fearing an earthquake. As they ducked into shelter in doorways, He crouched above Orihime, sheltering her from small debris falling as she stayed put. He noticed that a few petals had disappeared from her hair clip and realized that she was, in fact, sheltering them. Even though he couldn't see it, he saw the dust keeping clear of their position as if held by an invisible barrier.
"Inoue! What is going on?" he asked her over the din of loud crashes and rumbles.
Orihime didn't answer him, didn't even acknowledge him. She continued to sit, staring straight in front of her and clenching her hands tightly together.
As quickly as it had come, the 'earthquake' was gone, replaced by eerie silence. It was only broken by a sob and a long beep, let out by the by the opening and shutting of the door to Mara's room. Ishida and Sado emerged, dust covered and a little bloody.
"I can't do this," Orihime finally cried out, leaping and sprinting up the hallway towards the bedraggled pair, Ichigo hot on her heels. "I can still save her!" she yelled as she approached the door, tears streaming, "I can heal her!"
Ishida wrapped his arms around Orihime, pulling her close to him before she could reach for the handle. He cradled the sobbing woman to his chest, stroking her hair as she wept.
"I can save her," she whimpered to him, clinging to his his lapel with a tight grip.
"I know you can, Hime," he said gently, kissing her head, "but she didn't want to be saved."
Ichigo stepped up to the door, eyes wide as he peered through the small window. Scorch marks marred one crumbling wall and tile was shattered. The destruction of the room was nothing compared to the wracking sobs coming from the forlorn figure that knelt at the end of the bed, red hair draped around him where he bowed like a concealing sheet of blood. Renji. He could see Renji! But Renji looked so…
Ichigo's thoughts were cut short by the wall that was Sado stepping in front of him. Sado simply shook his head at Ichigo's astounded expression. "Gigai," he stated, clarifying Ichigo's racing thoughts.
"But I can talk-"
Sado lay a hand on his chest, half restraining, half comforting. "No," he mumbled, "Don't go in there, he's... breaking. Let him mourn in peace."
Turning his gaze back to the closed door and the distraught figure inside, Ichigo felt the strands of hope snap inside him for good. He nodded mutely in understanding.
Inside the room, Renji was oblivious to it all as he sobbed on his knees. None of the commotion reached his ears over the singular sound of the prolonged flat-line beep.
