It felt good to stand in the sunlight.
Ichigo had spent so long in Chaldea it felt good to have the sun on his skin, warming him from the outside in.
He had gotten so used to having the solid presence of his Shielder at his side that standing alone on the platform from the train felt more like standing naked in the streets of his hometown. Not a pleasant feeling. His family wouldn't be there to see him, and they weren't. He wasn't supposed to be home for a few more days at least. How could it be that everything that happened to him, all of the fighting and all of the bloodshed and all of the war would have happened in the span of just a few days? How could his years have been spent and yet nothing but him had changed?
It was enough to make his head spin.
He needed to get didn't think he could ever really finish explaining everything that had happened to him, but he would tell his family the truth. There had been an accident at the facility, and he was home early.
Even though it had never been an accident.
There was smoke. Smoke and the scent of blood and spilling gas lines and raw metal twisted beyond recognition.
He barely heard Dr. Roman yelling at his back, telling him to come back. Ichigo had never shied from danger and he wasn't going to start now. He dove into the smoke, choking him and clinging to his clothes. Pods of people were disarrayed around him, their bodies still and blood leaking out like creusom caskets. He couldn't get their doors open, no matter that he tried, but there was one person who was not there. One person who wasn't him, blocked from the first mission for his bad attitude towards the Director. Nevermind that the director was just a kid herself.
"Bulkhead closing in 180 seconds. All Devision 2 personal, evacuate immidiately-"
Ichigo didn't understand what that meant. He didn't know what most of what had happened today meant, just that his little summer internship wasn't even remotely what was on the flyer. But he didn't pause as he scrambled over and massive chunk of rock, stuck through with wires that cut his hands like an oversized porcupine.
A flash of white out of the corner of his eyes gives her away.
There, lying under the debris, her small body crushed an broken and leaking blood, was Mash.
It was Mash but all he could see was Yuzu, her wide eyes huge and terrified and filled with tears. Not a girl he'd met an hour before, after passing out on the floor. Not the best meeting.
The ground was slick with blood and water, turning Ichigo's white shirt a pale pink where it splashed on it when he dropped to his knees next to her. She was trapped, and the rock was too big for him to even be able to budge it.
That didn't stop Ichigo from trying.
The overhead voice was still talking, and Mash was muttering at him, her voice too weak to make much sound. She was dying. Dying, her tiny body crushed until she coughed and more than just blood came out.
Ichigo howled with rage and denial and shoved harder, harder. It was hot and smouldering and his hands blistered and blackened with burns. The light above them changed from blue to red and it burned into his retina until he couldn't see anything else. Just red. Red blood, red light, and his body gave out. Too much smoke, he couldn't breath, he couldn't see. He was helpless. He couldn't do a single thing and its burned more than fire.
Mash's small hand found his. Her grip was weak, but she was alive. She was still alive and he couldn't just let her die-
He grabbed her hand with both of his. Holding tight.
The overhead was still talking, her voice robotically calm and detached. Small paws from the ferret, or whatever it was that had brought him to Mash landed on top of their joined hands.
"Sen-pai," her voice was a whisper, and wet with blood. The smell was making him sick. "Please… r-run."
"No way," he denied firmly, gripping her hands tighter. "Not without you."
"Senpai…"
Someone else is yelling at him. A ripple in the air. White hair and panicked eyes. The director, the one Ichigo had pissed off. He reaches for her without thinking, and his hand grasps hers.
And then he didn't see red. He saw blue, light that poured across his skin and came from beneath it, rushing like water across the burning room. A circle in the sky, a hollow moon of blue and Mash's hand in his.
He knocks on the door, feeling more stranger than family. His key is long gone, he'd dropped it somewhere in Rome, he thinks, but its hard to keep track of trivial things like that when emperors are trying to gut you like a fish.
It's Yuzu that answers and he can't help it.
The second she'd within his sights he drags her into the fiercest hug he can manage. He's gotten taller, he realizes. It's not a surprise. He spent three years in less than a week, and even if he hadn't…
"Ichigo?" Yuzu doesn't fight him, and he's grateful for it. She must be confused, because as much as Ichigo loves his sisters he's not the most physically affectionate person in the world.
"Hey," Ichigo doesn't let go for a long time. "Sorry I was gone so long."
"Huh? But you're home early…"
Ichigo doesn't say anything. He's loath to let her go, but eventually he has to. Karin is at soccer practice, of course she is.
Ichigo feels his dad coming at him from a mile away, trying to sneak up on him from the clinic next door. He'd seen Isshin through the window, a glance in the corner of his eye and the flying kick thrown at him isn't stopped with violence for the first time in ten (thirteen) years.
Ichigo catching him around his middle, holding him off the ground, and Isshin has little choice but to hand there, his arms around Ichigo's head.
"Son?" there's a question or two or a thousand, but Ichigo doesn't know how to answer all of them. He doesn't put Isshin down until they're in the living room and even then he sits right next to him. Knee to knee. Yuzu brings in a can of tea for him.
"There was an accident," he tells them. "Chaldea, there was an explosion. So everyones been sent home." Everyone who survived. Everyone who made it through the initial explosion and wars that followed.
"Huh? I thought it was supposed to be a security organization, and there was an explosion?" Isshin scowled.
It was sabotage. It was death. It was the world turning red and the future being stripped away from human hands.
"It's fine," he says, even though it wasn't even remotely. There were a million things wrong with what has happened. "I'm not hurt." Which is true enough. He can see his dad sizing him up, trying to read between the lines. He had to look older. He's taller, his cheeks are sharper and he's lost baby fat. He's always been fit, but now he's stronger, built for endurance and running for weeks on end. Tempered by wars and helplessness and a desperate bid to save the world.
"I'm fine," he said again, and Isshin let it go. Ichigo didn't exactly know how to feel about that.
He spends the rest of the day flitting from family member to family member. School starts again in four days and he heavily considers skipping it to hang around his dad of all people.
He can't help thinking about Mash. She didn't have anything like this.
They move from one fire to another.
Ichigo knows if he stays among all this smoke he's going to end up with permanent damage. Because you know. Fuck him. He has no idea what happening, just that he thinks he's teleported and apparently magic is as real as ghosts are. And he's not dead, Fou sits on his shoulder.
He doesn't know where Mash went but he doesn't have time to worry about it. Some kind of skeleton gang, at least five of them are approaching. Skeletons, living, breath - well, moving in any case, skeletons. Half of them have swords. One has a spear.
Ichigo thinks he's broken his hand when he throws the first punch, but the skeleton crumble into a strange yellow powder that tastes like what Ichigo assumes a graveyard would. Death an d decay and strangely damp.
He can't stop with one but by the time he's kicked the absolute shit out of the last of them the sky lights up with another shade of red. Like a handful stars falling from the sky, and he realizes belatedly that there's no way for him to block whatever the fuck is flying at him.
So he tries to run, but there's a flash of purple and pink and Mash is in front of him. Only she's taller now, older, and she's holding a shield bigger than her body is. She's not alone. White hair, snake-yellow eyes. Olga Marie, the director that had been pissed at a 'commoner' like Ichigo was with her too. Only, she wasn't really there.
It had been years since Ichigo hadn't been able to tell the dead from the living, but this time it takes him a few minutes to realize that Mash is very much alive, if not apparently a magical girl, and Olga Marie is anything but alive.
They don't have time to worry about it, because they're under seige and Ichigo is apparently a wizard .
He should seriously be more surprised.
But he's not. It explains a few things. Like how he can see ghosts on the regular, and why his punching skeletons actually works.
They pick up another stray on their way, a wizard named Cu Chulainn. He and Mash swear themselves to Ichigo as his 'servents', familiars who he supplies with energy and they fight on his behalf. It almost reminds him of Chad, except here he's entirely outclassed.
The helplessness tastes bitter and vile.
A third servent appears, a woman this time who likes to turn people to stone.
"You'll all join my garden," she tells them, hanging off a petrified man. Ichigo can vaguely remember reading something about a person like this. The eyes, he thinks. It's her eyes.
He meets them squarely and bonks her harmlessly on the head. He'd have more luck punching the statues than her.
"Hey," his voice is gruff. "Stop being a lunatic. We're all getting out of here. So either come with us or let us go."
"You- what?" Everyone is staring at him. Bewildered, but Ichigo had never done what he was supposed to. He does what he wants, and even though she's threatened them somehow he can feel her. Like the rush of scales across his skin, cool and potentially threatening but if she really wanted to kill them-
Well, they'd just been hanging out by the river. If nothing else should have taken his head off with her curved spear.
"Am I gonna have to repeat myself? Damn, I said we've got bigger things to do than fight you, lady. So just come with us, or let us go!"
"Master!" Mash takes a startled step towards him. "Please step away from her! She could kill you!"
"Why would she do that?" Ichigo demanded, turning towards them, "We haven't even done anything!" It's not like he's against fighting. He fights all the time. But they need to get out of here. He needs to get back to his family, to his own damn time .
Besides that, he can see her power. He isn't sure how, but he can see her strength and that of the two other Servants. Not see, maybe, but he can feel it. Like he can feel ghosts even with his eyes closed. Either way, she's not strong enough to beat both of the others at once, even if Mash is a novice.
"This is a war…"
"Look," he spun to face her, staring fearlessly into her eyes. "Just say yes or no already!"
She blinks. Once, twice, thrice.
"Yes?"
So with three servants in toe, he sets out to fight the ones who holds the holy grail. All of this destruction, a city of fire devoid of the living and ghosts both... Only servants and masters remained, all because of a cup.
All for the sake of a wish.
Was it really worth it?
Ichigo's bed is equal points familiar and foreign.
He ends up going to sleep on the floor, the bed too soft and too warm and he feels like he's going to suffocate.
All he can think of are late nights spent in Chaldea with Mash, with Roman, and Di Vinci, and countless others. He misses the solid presence of Mash and her near encyclopedic knowledge of history. Everywhere , everywhen they went. He misses the sharp bite of Mordreds tongue betrayed by her sea-dark eyes. He missed the quiet, hulking form of Asterios, always well within reach. He missed the sharp bite of his guard dogs tongue and the quiet prayers of the saints at sunset. Even Kiyohime, her claws digging into his arm, afraid she'll be abandoned again-
He's up before dawn.
Ichigo puts together enough breakfast for twenty people. Rolled omelette and rice and foreign things. Shakshuka and fried green tomatoes.
His family stares when they come down for breakfast.
Ichigo stands, in his dads 'kiss the cook' apron, with a bowl of matcha stirring swiftly in his hands.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Karin asks, looking him up and down, trying to find something. Isshin's stare is particularly disconcerting. Like a scientist trying to understand something new, he's never seen his father look that way, especially not at his own son.
Ichigo has to turn away from their staring.
"The time is different there," is the understatement of the century. "I wanted to make breakfast."
"There's enough here for an army!" Yuzu cries, gesturing to the spread out in front of them.
Or enough for two Berserkers.
"We can have leftovers for lunch?" is about the only explanation he has. How does he explain that he used to cooking with EMIYA enough for an actual army?
"Yeah… I guess so," Karin is still staring.
Isshin pitches himself at the portrait of their mother, sobbing grossly.
"Masaki! Our son is growing up so fast!"
Lev Lainur has an ugly smile. Everything about him is slimy and distrustful and Ichigo has seen enough ghosts to know, just by looking at him, that he is not human.
So when Olga Marie tries to go running to him, Ichigo wraps a firm arm around her middle and holds her back.
"Let go!" she shrieked, clawing towards the slimy man, "It's Lev! Lev will fix everything he'll-"
"He'll kill you."
Olga Marie freezes in his arms, looking towards Medusa. Rider. Her eyes are narrowed and her hair writhes with snakes, hissing a spitting venom.
"Kill her?" Lev laughs, a sound like metal grating and children screaming. There's nothing pleasant about it. "I already have! I planted that bomb directly under her feet, I have no idea how she's even here!"
Ichigo knows.
It's because of him. Because of his interference in the explosion. The other hand he'd grabbed, it must have been Marie's. And they're all here together.
"W-wait, no. I'm not dead! I can't be!" But the fight goes out of her. She lets Ichigo hold her, and when Lev beacons gravity shifts and the world tries to pull Olga Marie from his arms. He tightens his hold and barks at Medusa. Chain snake out, lashing them together and to the ground and holding them there, even as Lev pulls until it feels like his skin will come off. Ichigo can feel it again, the drain on his energy. Mana, magic energy, pulled when the servants fought. He has no idea how much he has but it must be just enough for Lev to scoff.
He shows them the red earth again. The world, the future. Humanity, all gone. Destroyed in an instant, and they the only survivors. All of the past, all of the future.
There is nothing left of it, save him, Mash, and the ghost in his arms.
Something inside him writhes and snarls, thirsting for vengeance and at the same time is keens a wailing cry of anguish.
It's his mother all over again. Laying on the riverbank, bleeding out and Ichigo helpless in her arms.
It's Mash in the command room, crushed under burning stone and Ichigo only able to hold her hand.
No, no, no, no!
He won't allow it. He will not let himself be so useless .
There's a flare of energy and Medusa gasps. Mash and Cu straighten up like dogs that heard a whistle and their fight turn on a dime. The archer falls, and his king a second later until all five of them stand before Lev. United.
School starts.
The world turns on.
Everything is the same, and nothing is at all.