Rain.

It had been falling more intensely lately.

He knew the root cause of it, that the overbearing sadness Ichigo felt was due to his mother's death, and yet he was powerless to stop it. Yhwach had sapped Masaki's power through Auswahlen, leaving her defenseless against Grand Fisher. Ever since that day, Ichigo had been skipping school, spending every moment he could searching for his mother on the riverbank. How the spirit wished he could comfort the boy, to hold him in his arms and console him, but alas, it was not to be.

His mind began to idly wander to how his counterpart was handling the last few days. The boy in white merely mumbled something the older spirit didn't quite catch and walked off into the expanse of the city once the rain started. He hadn't been heard from since. The cloaked Quincy spirit hoped he was alright. Zangetsu could be quite temperamental when he wanted to be. He reminded him of an actual nine-year-old instead of a Zanpakuto spirit sometimes, if he were being honest. Getting off of his pole, he decided that looking for the little Hollow was the most productive use of his time, and the rain showed no signs of clearing up anytime soon.

Speaking of the small white spirit, he was currently huddled up inside one of the buildings whose windows he had broken to get into. He had found this one some number of years ago (Ichigo was four at the time, as he recalled) to get away from the rain and had since made it into an apartment of sorts. Looking in the fridge, he grabbed a half-eaten chocolate bar he'd left there the last time he'd been here and began nibbling on it. He had no real need to eat, he knew. It was merely something he enjoyed doing. He blamed Ichigo for his love of chocolate. It was something the two of them seemed to share. As he sat in the corner of his house, cold and alone, he began to wonder if things could've ended differently. "What if," he thought.

"What if Isshin had taught Ichigo to be a Soul Reaper?"

"What if Masaki taught him how to use a bow?"

At least then, one of them could've done something. Whether the old man used some sort of Quincy ability (he never really made it a point to learn any of their names or specifics) to help Ichigo defeat Grand Fisher or he had been able to take over and tear it to shreds, one of them could've helped their King stop that monster.

Neither of them were fools. Isshin, Masaki, Old Man, even himself; they could all plainly see that Ichigo had vast amounts of raw potential. He had the blood of both a Quincy and a Soul Reaper, Hollow powers inherited from Zangetsu's predecessor White, and Fullbringer abilities from White's essence which had been left in Masaki. He was some of everything, and that was what would've made him so powerful.

He could hear Old Man in his head right now, blabbering about why this way of thinking was dangerous.

"If Ichigo is allowed to become a Soul Reaper, he'll face hardship. He'll suffer pain and loss, and I'll eventually have to kill him with my own hands. And that's if Soul Society doesn't learn of his existence. He'll be executed and blah blah blah blah blah."

Having a short laugh at how serious his companion could be (and usually was), Zangetsu hoisted himself up onto the bed, which thankfully, was out of the path of the broken window (he really needed to fix that window one of these days). Truth be told, there wasn't much to do inside of the apartment. There was an arcade a few windows down that he could go to (he knew that because he had broken the window leading to it about a year before he found his current dwelling as he was exploring). Why there was an arcade inside of King's soul was something he didn't know. On second thought, he was probably better off not knowing. Regardless, he wasn't about to go back out in the rain.

Just as he was about to lie down for a while, he heard tapping on one of the adjacent windows. Muttering a quiet "what," he heard the Quincy spirit enter the room through the broken window. He could've at least had the decency to knock on the leftover glass on the pane instead of another window altogether, but at this point, the Hollow was too tired to care.

"I was looking for you. You've been gone for days now," Old Man commented, looking around the room.

"You think I didn't know that? I wanted to be left alone for a while," Zangetsu murmured in response, turning over so that he was facing away from his counterpart.

"It's affected you too, hasn't it? Just like it did him. That's why you left, isn't it?" the Quincy king asked.

"Not really. I just don't like the rain. It's cold," the Zanpakuto spirit said quietly. Of course Masaki's death had affected him, Yhwach could see that. It didn't help that Zangetsu himself was a terrible liar (he'd been making it a point to try to work on that). It just hadn't affected him in the way he thought it had.

"There's something on your mind. What's wrong?"

"I've just been thinking. What if King was a Soul Reaper? Or even a Quincy? He has what it takes, and with one or both of us backing him, he could've taken that Hollow out. It wasn't even a Menos."

"Neither are you."

"I might as well be. White was a bunch of Soul Reaper souls merged into one, right? It's not all that different from a Menos, really."

"I've been meaning to ask you about that."

"About what?"

"Why do you talk about White like it's a separate entity? You're the result of White having mixed with Ichigo's Soul Reaper powers. You are White, at least in that sense."

"I'm Zangetsu. Not White. I don't like thinking of me as having almost stopped me from existing. As almost stopping King from existing," the Hollow explained, his tone becoming less atypical of him and more somber as he finished.

"So that's what this is about. You're worried about Ichigo. And about how he's handling this."

"You could tell?"

"What you meant was clear by the time you finished."

"I probably don't need to explain it to you. You understand what it's like. Neither of us can do anything but watch."

"..."

"... Maybe it would have been better if White never existed. If it didn't, Isshin would still have his powers, and he could've done something about that Hollow. It was because of White that he had to give them up, right?"

"That's true, but without White, you wouldn't have existed. Ichigo wouldn't have existed."

"What's that mean?" Zangetsu asked, his ears slightly perking up.

"It's not very complicated. Without White, Isshin would've never come to Karakura Town and met Masaki. Without that, Ichigo would've never been born. That was the good thing to come out of that ordeal. This family," Yhwach mused. "You should go to sleep now. I can tell you're tired. I'll be back to check on you later," he said as he looked up toward the broken window, preparing to jump out and leave. A voice and a small hand on his wrist stopped him, however.

"Don't go."

It was Zangetsu. Without Yhwach having noticed, Zangetsu had grabbed on to his sleeve, as if commanding him to stay.

"I don't want to be alone right now," he said, shivering. Yhwach couldn't tell if it was from the cold, loneliness, fear, or all three, but regardless, he pulled the boy's covers out from under him, and brought them up to his chin, tucking him in. Regardless of what appearances might otherwise suggest, he'd always held a soft spot for the little Zanpakuto spirit, viewing him as a son of sorts, much like he did with Ichigo. As the small Hollow drifted off to sleep, Yhwach said one thing as he gripped the boy's hand in his own.

"I'll be right here when you wake up."