Cross-posted from AO3. FFN doesn't let me post images within the text, so if you would like to read this story with the accompanying visuals, here's the AO3 link. Just take out the spaces: archiveofourown (DOT ORG SLASH) works/18090383/chapters/42761684

Chapter 2: And gently rise and softly call

There was a loud beeping sound nearby. Ichigo's alarm clock-he must have forgotten to turn it off before leaving. Groggily, Orihime blinked her eyes open, rubbing the sleep from them. She groaned, reaching over to the nightstand to turn it off.

Her fingers met the wall.

What the hell? She cracked her eyes opened and stared at the wall. It was pale pink.

Startled, she sat up, looking around. The alarm clock had gotten louder, but it barely reached her. She stared, lips parted slightly. A queen sized bed with a pink comforter, a room with rosy walls. Carpet. A second-hand bookcase and desk. Pictures of her friends tacked up on the walls.

She was in her room. The room from her apartment, where she'd stayed in Karakura all those years ago. The room she'd been in back in high school. There, on the book shelf, was the teddy bear her brother had given her. It wasn't torn, as it had become after Sora had come back as a hollow. Everything was… serene.

"This is a dream," she said. Her voice came out sugary sweet. She reached up, touching her face. Her cheeks were round with baby fat. "A dream," she repeated. She could hear in both ears.

She threw the covers off and ran to her bathroom. She was wearing a pair of button up pajamas printed with ducklings and flowers, and she ripped the top off with such ferocity that several buttons pinged against the glass of the mirror. She turned, eyes wide and harried, and investigated her body.

The only thing marring her back was the tan line from a swimsuit, years ago thrown away. "A dream!" She yelled at the mirror. Her breasts swung into view, smaller with her young age. She cupped them. "A dream!"

She ran back into her room. Posted above her cluttered desk was a calendar.

August 20th, 2001. The summer just before it all began.

"Holy shit." She back-peddled to the bathroom to stare herself down in the mirror. "This is a dream," she told her reflection. "Wake up!" She slapped herself, hard. Pain bloomed across her cheek, but she did not wake. She pulled her hand back, staring at it. No wedding ring.

God but that was a relief, somehow. She knew she should feel bad for feeling relieved, but there was no stopping it. She dropped her hand and looked back up into the mirror, staring herself down.

So much had changed. Her hair was longer, and her bangs were horribly short and choppy; this was before she got good at cutting her own hair. She was rounder in the face but sharper around the hips, and there were not premature lines in her face. She snapped a finger next to her ear again, unable to believe she could hear the noise. She hadn't been able to hear out of both ears since before Hueco Mundo. Since before Ichigo had turned… hollow.

The alarm clock suddenly shut itself off, as though it understood no one was going to heed its screaming. Orihime hadn't even realized it was still going off, but the sudden silence snapped her out of her trance in the mirror.

"This is probably a dream," she said out loud, but she didn't sound confident even to her own ears. "Probably," she said. She stood there for a moment longer, just looking her younger self down in the mirror. Oh, but she had been the innocent type, her bathing suit tan line nearly reaching her collar bones.

She touched them, reverently. No scars. Nothing.

Her hand drifted from her collar to her face, and then further-to her hairline. Her hair pins were missing. She never went to bed without her hairpins, and for a moment, panic swelled in her like a tide. She recalled, then, how casual she had been with them in the past. They were probably still on her nightstand.

There was a sudden noise outside her room.

"Orihime!"

She turned, eyes wide. She knew that voice.

"Orihime! Come on, we're going to be late!"

"T…" She crept out of the bathroom and back into her bedroom. "Tatsuki?"

Tatsuki appeared in the doorway. "Are you rea-Orihime! Put a shirt on, what the hell!?" She dropped her bag and covered her eyes, face bright red. "What are you even doing, we're going to be late!"

"Late…?" She blinked. "For what?"

"School! You didn't forget, did you? For crying out loud, it's the second week!"

Orihime blinked at her.

"Well? Get a move on!"

"R-right!" Orihime turned to head into the bathroom, where her closet was in the apartment she shared with Ichigo. She remembered a second later that she'd had a dresser once upon a time, and doubled back to frantically search for her uniform.

As she went through her clothes she couldn't help but cringe. Her clothing was so ugly. Of course, she'd been dirt poor, but still, the things she'd come up with… A maxi orange skirt and a purple button up? What had she been thinking?

Finally, she secured her uniform and dressed, all the while ignoring Tatsuki, who was talking about homework. Homework. Like Orihime wasn't having the mind-trip of the century. Finished, she grabbed the hairpins from her nightstand.

"Ready?"

"Um…" she furrowed her brow, staring at the pins. She could feel her fairies, but they weren't active. They were sleeping. The last time they'd slept was during the war, when she'd completely exhausted her powers healing the wounded. (On both sides, but that was her dirty little secret.) She'd not used them to such an extent since.

"Orihime? Jeez, are you even awake in there?" Tatsuki fondly knocked on the back of Orihime's head.

Orihime ignored the way her skin crawled from being touched by someone she couldn't see and quickly hopped around. "Yeah, I'm ready." She put her pins on the lapel of her uniform.

"New look?" Tatsuki raised her brows.

"Yeah, for if my hair gets damaged, so they won't fall out." She realized what a dumb thing that was to say just as it came out. Fifteen-year-old Orihime wouldn't have worried about such things. "W-when the aliens come take over! Spooky!"

Tatuski eyed her. "Uh-huh. Whatever you say, Hime. Now let's go, we're already running late." They started for the door. "What are-Get your lunch! Are you okay? Did you hit your head?"

"Oh. My lunch! Right!" Orihime turned on her heel and went to the fridge, where there was a neatly wrapped lunchbox waiting for her. She could not imagine what horrors it contained. That was a problem for later. She appeared at the door. "Ready. For real this time." Unless, of course, there was something else she'd forgotten. But Tatsuki said nothing, simply waiting while Orihime hurried to put her shoes on.

Together, they ventured out into the hot April air.

"God, Ichigo pissed me off last night," she said.

Orihime stiffened at the mention. "What did he do?"

"He's quitting the dojo. Something about dealing with some problem he's having. I don't know. It's all bullshit, basically. He's just pissy he can't skip up a bunch of levels when he's always missing practice."

He was probably having his ghost problem really come to head about now. "Oh. That's too bad." Did she have a crush on him by this point? She couldn't remember. Did it matter if she played along, anyway? She was still pretty sure this was a dream.

She stumbled on the uneven sidewalk. She looked down, glaring. They'd fixed that her senior year, just before she dropped out.

Tatsuki laughed good naturedly. "Klutz."
Her toes hurt. Maybe this wasn't a dream. But there was… there was no way she'd gone back in time eight years. Sure, her powers were domain over time and reality, but she hadn't even summoned her fairies…

Or had she? She reached up, touching them where they rested on her chest. She could feel them sleeping; more than just tired, they were exhausted. Was it possible that they had somehow sent her back in the timeline? They were extensions of her soul. What she wanted, they carried out. Had she simply wished to go back so hard that she had?

Impossible. There was just no way.

This had to be some sort of trick.

"Duck your head," Tatsuki said. She reached out and gently pushed Orihime down, so that she wouldn't smack her face into a low-hanging tree branch. Orihime looked over at her friend. She felt her eyes get glassy.

Tatsuki really had looked out for her, back in the day. Before everything had gone to shit. Why hadn't she trusted Tatsuki? She should have. The woman was her very best friend. She'd missed her, so, so badly, so much that it took hold of her like a physical force and squeezed.

She hurled herself at Tatsuki, hugging her for everything she was worth.

"O-Orihime!?" Tatsuki staggered for a second before she regained her balance. "Whoa, whoa, what's wrong? Are you okay?"

"Fine." Orihime sniffed and discretely wiped her face as she drew back. "I just missed you."

"I walked you to school yesterday…" She reached out, putting the back of her hand against Orihime's forehead. "You don't feel warm. Are you sure you're okay? You're acting very strange."

She shook her head. "I'm fine. I promise. Now come on," she grabbed Tatsuki's hand. "We're going to be late if we don't hurry." She didn't let go of Tatsuki's hand, even seeing the girl's blush. She'd been so blind when she was younger.

Running into school was a feeling without description. People she hadn't seen in years, friends she'd cut out of her life, smiles she thought she'd never see again. She could barely take it all in. What really drove it all was sitting down in class and seeing Chad and Uryuu, young and unspoilt by the ravages of war and pain. They were painfully youthful, and innocent. She ached for both of them.

The bell rang, and in stumbled Ichigo.

He looked tired, but not the way she was used to. He hadn't been sleeping, was all, but the rest of him… he was a child. A mere boy. His hair stuck up every which-way, untamed from Ichigo's disregard; he hadn't grown into what would become his true image yet. He looked too long and all wrong, body not yet done growing. He scowled, almost comically. There was no weight behind his eyes, no ghosts. His bare hands were unmarked and soft-looking. His belt was hanging over the side, too long. He was almost skinny. He didn't look happy, but compared to what she knew, it was a near thing.

She realized she was staring and looked away quickly. Tatsuki caught her eye and grinned, knowingly. So then she had a crush on him, even back then. And he hadn't even known what good cologne was, yeesh. She had no standards.

Class began. She didn't know how to feel about it all, but she had time to check out. She remembered most of the material they would be going over, and she needed to just… think, for a minute.

It wasn't a dream. She was almost certain about that. It was too real, and already had carried on for too long to be usual. Under the desk, she pinched her thigh. Yep, she could still feel pain, and everything else, too. The details were too sharp, the things she'd forgotten too easy to find. This was real, some way or another.

So what did that mean for her?

For years, she'd laid awake at night next to a husband who she didn't love, knowing he was probably thinking about someone else himself, and wondered what she could have done differently. Not just with him, but with everything. The beginning, the war, her powers, her friends… everything.

And she was right at the beginning of it all. If this was really what she thought it was, and she had somehow transported herself back in time, she had a chance to change everything. And it all started with one person.

She opened the notebook on top of her stack of texts and such. It had flowers and glittery butterflies on the cover, and faded hearts on the actual pages, which were a pale pink. She grabbed her blue glitter gel pen with the hello kitty charm on the end and clicked it a few times, before writing KILL AIZEN at the very top of the page, bold letters, underlined three times.

As she understood it, the timeline was thus:

Rukia would arrive in a few days, and lose her powers. Ichigo would become a shinigami. Aizen would set that all up, but then he would leave to be sure his plans in soul society were going just so.

Rukia's body would start acting up. Kisuke would give her the new gigia, this one with the hogyoku embedded in it. From there, the plot would truly unfold.

Rukia would be arrested, Ichigo would almost die. Rukia would be sentenced to death by Aizen, who would have by then killed central 46. Ichigo would train to save her, and then enter soul society.

They would rescue her. Aizen would retrieve the hogyoku. And from there, the war would begin.

She chewed her lip. In her midnight idling, she'd often thought about stopping it all. But she remembered Ichigo after the war, idle and useless, wishing simply for more. How could she take that away from him? The chance to learn the truth about what had happened to his mother, and have not only revenge, but closure? Ichigo had done great things as a shinigami, and not just during the war.

Could she take that away from him? Even knowing the pain that he would endure, that they would all endure?

She knew it had to happen. Rukia would have to meet Ichigo, as fate dictated. From there, though, she could begin to change the timeline. As of that very moment, there were only a handful of people that knew about Aizen's true intentions. She just happened to be the only person who knew that Aizen was unaware of. That was her true advantage in all of this. Aizen's plans could all be crushed by the tiniest anomaly.

And she was a pretty big wrench in the gears, if she did say so herself.

A note landed on her desk. Orihime looked up, instinctively, but of course no one was looking her way. She opened it, finding it was from Tatsuki. She recognized the handwriting.

Where should we eat lunch?

Orihime couldn't help but smile. Back in the day she'd always idled about going somewhere else before finally deciding to go to the tree, like always. Not this time. She wanted to see her old friends, of course, but she had a mission to begin.

The roof she wrote back.

She needed to talk to Ichigo.

~(o0o)~

"Are you sure you really want to do this?" Tatsuki whispered. They walked steadily up the stairwell. Orihime was slightly frustrated, finding herself winded by the hurried pace. She was out of shape. That would be fixed soon.

"Yes," she said.

"I thought you were afraid of Ichigo," Tatsuki teased. "Everyone is."

"What's he going to do? Punch me in broad daylight?" Orihime rolled her eyes, knowing Tatsuki couldn't see. She heard Tatsuki's steps falter for a moment before she continued up the stairs.

"Ichigo wouldn't hit a girl," Tatsuki tsked.

"Not yet, anyway," Orihime muttered. He'd be just fine with it when he realized that there were such things as female villains. Louder, she said, "I know. I'm not scared of him." What was it she had used to say… Oh, right. "I think he has a funny face."

"Oh… kay?"

She threw open the door to the roof. Ichigo, Chad, Keigo, and Mizuru were already up there, talking back and forth as they opened their lunch boxes. Orihime started towards them, determined.

"Orihime," Tatsuki hissed. "What are you doing?"

"I didn't come up here to pretend to ignore them," she said.

"What? Orihime, can we talk-ah, hi, Ichigo!"

Ichigo squinted up at Orihime and Tatsuki. Blinded by the sun behind Orihime's head, he looked even more like a kid. This was the boy who would shake worlds. This was the boy who would defy death. The boy who would go to Hell and back again, beat every last impossibility the universe had to order. This was the boy who would be a god.

God he looked stupid.

"Ichigo," Orihime nodded at him and then sat, folding her legs neatly beneath herself. "Chad. Keigo, Mizuru."

"She talked to me!" Kiego squeaked. He eyed her chest without shame.

Orihime ignored him. She looked up at Tatsuki, reaching her hand out in asking. "Sit," she said, and smiled. Tatsuki colored again, but she did sit, squishing in between Ichigo and Orihime.

Orihime turned and smiled at Chad, who was on her other side. Like Ichigo, most people feared him. She never had, but she hadn't gotten used to his hulking stature right away either. Now, as a young teen, he looked like a puppy to her. She scooted closer, so that their arms brushed, and did not lean away from him. He watched her, curious and surprised, and, she was sure, happy to see she was comfortable with him.

Out of the whole group, she had to say it was Mizuru who was most conventionally dangerous. She'd heard about the molotov cocktail incident.

"Ichigo, do you know Uryuu Ishida?" She started without preamble.

"Uh…" he blinked at her, surprised that she was there to begin with, it seemed.

She waited.

"Uh, no, I don't think so. What grade?"

"What grade?" Tatsuki recovered. "Are you stupid? He's in our class!"

"A transfer?"

"For the love of-"

"I think you two would get along," Orihime said with a bright smile. "I feel bad for him, he's always alone when he eats. Maybe you could bully him into being your friend."

"Bully? Now hold on a second. I don't know what kind of guy you think I am-"

"So you'll do it?" She beamed up at him, blinking her large 'innocent' eyes at him. She was twenty three damn years old, and she knew how to sway men and women alike to her advantage. She was gorgeous and brilliant, and she was not the little girl she had once been. Matsumoto had taught her the trade of manipulation just as she'd taught her the sword.

"I… uh, I…"

"Great!" Orihime leaned around Tatsuki to grab Ichigo's hand and shake it, as though they were closing a deal. Physical touch was key. Tomorrow, if she remembered correctly. Tomorrow Ichigo was going to meet Rukia. If she remembered correctly, his weird rivalry with Ishida started after that.

Not if she could get to Ishida first.

"Tatsuki, you and Ichigo catch up." Orihime stood with a little smile, easily falling into the body language of her former self. She'd had lots of practice acting like nothing had changed, after all. "I'll be right back!" She abandoned her lunch and friends alike, heading back down to the classroom, where Uryuu often ate alone.

He'd always been a melancholy sort of man. Ichigo, of course, had been depressed from the beginning, but he'd gotten better when he found something to apply himself to-his shinigami work. Uryuu had always had his quincy heritage to hold to, but it did not hold the glory and happiness that it did for Ichigo. In it were Uryuu's memories of a beloved grandfather, murdered, and nearly as bad, his father's ever-present hypocrisy and shame.

She slid the classroom door. To anyone else, he wouldn't have revealed that he had even seen her. But she knew the tilt of his head and the stiffening of his shoulders-the trick where he adjusted his glasses, catching a reflection in the back of the glass. Uryuu had always been smart, even as a teen.

"Uryuu," she said. She paused. Shit, she'd called everyone by their first names. She must have looked nuts. The day before, she'd probably not been able to so much as look them in the eye. It had taken her until she was nineteen to call Ichigo by his first name. "I mean, Ishida."

"Inoue," he said. He inclined his head.

She rushed around his desk and turned the chair in front of him around, so that she could sit while facing him. "We're friends, aren't we?"

"... We are classmates."

"We're clubmates, too. You help me with my sewing. You buy fabric with me. Wouldn't you say that's what friends do?" When he just stared at her she sighed. He'd been so much more difficult, back in the day. "Come sit with me."

"What?" He began to pink.

"Come sit with me. And my friends. Up on the roof. You know Kurosaki, right? I think you two could friends." At his huff of disbelief she laughed. "I know, I know. It seems crazy. But I really think you would be good friends. I'm seldom wrong about these things, Uryuu!"

He looked at her, brows furrowed. For a moment, he was silent. "You're different," he said, after a moment.

She swallowed. "What? Me? Of course I'm different! I change every day, one to the next. That's the glory of life!" She threw her hands dramatically over her head, for flair. She hoped it was working.

"... Right," he sighed. "Listen, Inoue, it's not that I don't appreciate your offer, but I prefer to eat alone."

"No you don't."

He scowled on instinct, looking back up at her. "Excuse me?"

She looked at him, calmly. "No you don't."

He stared.

Orihime shrugged, looking away. "I get lonely. Do you get lonely, Uryuu?" When he didn't answer she went on. "I think you've been alone. For a very long time. And I don't think you like it nearly as much as you pretend to. I think it's all you know, but you wish… you wish it wasn't. I think you want to go up to the roof and eat with and my friends, and I think you're desperate for a way to do it without ruining your reputation."

His eyes met her own. His scowl faltered, and after a moment, disappeared completely. "I…" He looked at his hands. His fingers were bandaged. He'd been overrun with the recent influx of hollows, it seemed. That was right-before Rukia had come, he'd been the only one protecting Karakura. What a lonely existence it must have been.

"You wouldn't leave me and Tatsuki up there with a bunch of boys, unsupervised, would you? You're always so concerned about decorum. Wouldn't it make sense for you to be there, to make sure no funny business goes down?"

He went pink again. "Well. I. I. Um."

"Come up to the roof with us tomorrow," she said, looking at the clock. She was already out of time. "If you don't, I just might cry. And you wouldn't want to make a girl cry, now, would you, Uryuu?"

He looked quickly down at his desk, pushing his glasses up awkwardly. Ah, to be fifteen again. "I guess I wouldn't."

She laughed. "Good. I'll see you then." She stood and started back to her own desk, knowing the bell would ring soon. She paused astride Uryuu, though, and said, "Thank you. I mean it."

He looked up at her, confusion written in his face. The bell rang before he could ask her anything, though, and Orihime flitted back to her desk, pasting on a big dorky smile, hoping that despite everything, she was still sliding beneath the radar.

~(o0o)~

Being fifteen again was novel for less than a day. By the time she walked herself back home, she was bone-tired from pretending all day, laden down with homework she'd completed once before anyway, and on top of it all, she was starving. She'd completely forgotten to eat her lunch, and then had actually gotten in trouble when trying to eat it later on. She'd forgotten that she could get in trouble for doing anything in high school. Most of all, asking to go to the bathroom. Who asked to go? Like they had a right to deny her right to pee!

Whatever. She was alone, and she could finally eat her lunch. Her lunch, which consisted of rice, red bean paste, and pickled eggs. She stared at the disgusting mush before popping it in the microwave, knowing full well that there was no way she could afford to just throw away food. She'd not forgotten what it was like to just barely scrape by.

She set up camp in her underwear and an oversized T-shirt, eating her reheated lunch while she watched some crime show that was probably cancelled in her future. Raunchy stuff, with sexy uniforms and heavy kissing scenes. Fifteen-year-old Orihime would have watched through her fingers while blushing. Twenty-three-year-old Orihime wondered about the moral implications of using her underaged body for sex, and then eventually found herself at a shady corner store happily purchasing a case of old porn VHSs while internally hoping the clerk thought she wasn't fifteen, because, well, that was just messed up. She took her stash back home and merrily rubbed one out on the couch, internally lamenting the loss of easy access to pornography via the internet as the picture went fuzzy now and then.

"Oh, the joys of being twenty three," she chimed, and went ahead and brought an improvement from year nineteen to her fifteen year old self by ordering a vibrator online, unwilling to take her far-too-young body to any sort of actual sex shop. She was going to have the most stressful month ever, so of course the vibrator was necessary, but she could wait for it to arrive in the mail.

She wanted to buy sake, which Ran had gotten her sweet on, but she was pretty sure she wouldn't fool anyone on that front. She could always pull a Rangiku and flash her tits for some alcohol, but again. Fifteen years old. She didn't want to debauch herself like that when she was just a teen. What would Sora say?

She gasped, sitting up suddenly and dislodging her dishes. They went tumbling to the floor, but she didn't notice. "Holy crap! Sora."

Quickly, she ran to her room, throwing on a bra and some pajama pants. With a pair of slippers on, she ran out onto the porch, looking around frantically. She was worried, for a moment, that maybe he younger body wouldn't have her older-self's spiritual powers, and that she wouldn't be able to see souls yet.

But there he was.

She hadn't gotten to see him again, as himself, after he'd died. She'd seen his face, and his hollow form, but not him. He stood there, in his funeral suit, looking down at the house. He looked sad.

"Sora!" She yelled.

He startled, looking around.

"Sora!" She waved, both arms above her head. "Sora!"

He looked down at her, clearly confused. "Or… ihime?"

"I can see you!" She called. She laughed. Her eyes were teary again, but she wiped at them quickly. "Come here, come here, quick!"

He did, eyes wide in disbelief. He stepped onto the porch. "Orihime, can you… can you see me?"

"I can see you!" She laughed. She rushed at him, hugging him tightly. Her hands didn't pass through him. She could feel his entire body jolt in surprise. She drew back, still laughing, and blinked the tears from her eyes. "Come inside before the neighbors see me and call me a crazy person."

He followed, shocked into silence, and allowed himself to be guided to her table, where he sat. She sat on the surface of the table, right next to him, holding his hands in her lap. For a minute, all she could do was look at him, her bottom lip pinched between her teeth.

He stared at her, lost.

"Hi," she whispered.

"Orihime, is this a dream?"

"I've been asking myself that all day," she laughed. "Oh, Sora. It's so good to see you. I've miss you so much." She hugged him again, delighting in the way he held her back this time. "I'm so sorry I couldn't see you before. I know you were watching over me, I really do. I know you heard me praying."

"I thought you were starting to forget about me," he whispered.

"How could I ever forget you?" She admonished. "Oh, Sora. I'm so glad you're here."

"I am, too, but… how can you see me? Now, when you couldn't before?"

"That's… well, that's a long story. But god, Sora, I feel like I'm going crazy. I have to tell someone." She drew away from him. "If you thought you were dreaming before, this is really going to make your head spin. Are you ready?"

"I'm still in shock," he laughed. "You… you can really see me."

She laughed. "Yeah, Sora. I can. And I've missed you so, so much."

"I've missed you too." He smiled, reaching out to tuck her hair behind her ear. His eyes caught on the pins, clipped to the collar of her shirt. "You really do wear them everywhere, don't you?"

She reached up and touched them. "They're a part of my soul now," she said, seriously. "Sora… I've come back from the future."

He blinked.

"I know. I know I say wild, crazy things all the time, and, and I mean them, but this time I mean it literally. I really, really did come back from the future. I'm twenty three, and I'm married, and I hate it so, so much Sora, oh god, you can't imagine."

"You're… what?"

"Let me. Let me start at the beginning. This is all going to sound crazy, I know, but bear with me, alright?"

Slowly, he nodded. And Orihime told him the story, start to finish, of how she grew up in her timeline. The hours crept by without either of their notice, and by the time Orihime had finished her tale, it was three in the morning, and they'd both relocated to her bed, where they lay facing each other, both yawning and trying not to show it.

"And that's that. I woke up this morning in my bed, here, and now here we are."

He shook his head. He'd been doing a lot of that over the course of her speech.

"What do I do?"

"So this… Aizen… guy?"

She nodded.

"He's going to, uh, send some other-what did you call them?"

"Hollows."

"Hollows. He's going to send some hollow to turn me into one of them?"

"Yes. Well Grand Fisher. He's one of Aizen's guys."

"I've seen those things, you know. The monsters. I just never imagined that…"

She nodded. "I know. It's a lot to take in."

"But now that I know, we can stop it, right? You can see me now, it can be just like old times. I don't need to sleep, so I can just stay in your living room. I can help with the cooking and the cleaning, and with your homework. Just like I wanted to, before I… before I…" he grew silent.

Orihime looked down at her hands, heart folding. "I wish you could stay here. But it's not safe."

"I could never attack you, Orihime! Knowing now-"

"Not for me, Sora. For you. It's dangerous for souls to stay in the living realm. Sora, you know I want you to be with me. But this isn't the only way people become hollows. I can't always be there for you. What happens when I really do grow up, again, and I get married and move on? You can't just keep looking for people who can see you, or, or rely on me. I'm not enough to be your whole life, Sora."

"You've always been my whole life."

"I shouldn't have been," she said. "Our parents shouldn't have done that to you. You shouldn't have had to be my dad and my brother, both at once." She reached out, pushing his hair out of his face. He'd died young. Barely twenty-one. She was older than him, she realized. "Sora. I love you so much. But you can't stay here. You deserve your own life."

He looked at her, lost.

"I know that after everything I've told you, soul society sounds like the last place anyone should go. But it really can be a new home. You'll make family there. And-and Sora, I can get you into the academy!" She was excited, then, and she sat up. "Sora, then I really could come see you whenever I wanted. Last time, when you were exercised, you… I lost you. Hollows lose their memories, as a mercy, so they won't have to be buried in guilt. But you're still a plus soul. If you pass on now, you'll get to keep everything, and you can become a soul reaper, even. You could come see me whenever you wanted. And I'd get to see you."

"You really are from the future. Aren't you?"

She blinked at him. "Huh?"

"You've grown up, Hime." He reached out and gently cuffed her on the side of the head. "What happened to the little girl I remember?"

Orihime's smile faded, slightly. "She's still in here." she held a hand over her heart. "Somewhere."

Sora searched her face. "Orihime… what are you going to do about Aizen?"

She looked over to her backpack, where the notebook was waiting. "What I have to."

"You're not a killer," he said. "You never have been, never will be."

She ached. Truly, she did. But what was she to do? "For my friends, Sora? I would be a killer. I have been." She looked back at him, sure that her sorrow was reflected in her eyes. She made no effort to conceal it. "I'll do what has to be done. And at the end of all this, I hope… I hope Aizen does die. I mean it Sora." She shuddered, just thinking about his cold smirk. "He's evil, Sora. He's evil."

Sora watched her. "How can I help?"

She blinked back to reality, visions of Aizen's smirk fading from view. "You can help me by passing on. Knowing you're out there, safe? And ready for me to come home to? That's everything to me. Before, I had nothing."

"And now?"

"I'm coming out of this one with my friends and family intact," she promised him. "And maybe, if I'm extra careful, I'll come out of it with the little girl you remember, too. A little older, a little wiser, and a little sadder, but there all the same."

He nodded at her. Looking over, he spied the clock. "But for now," he said, and stood, hands on his hips. "It's way past your bedtime."

She laughed. "You're not the boss of me anymore!"

"I sure am," he said. "Bedtime, Orihime. Teeth brushed, pjs on, and tuck in. Five minutes."

Senselessly, she giggled, jumping up to do as he said. She brushed her teeth and changed out of her dinner-stained t shirt, jumping back into bed, where Sora was waiting. He tucked her in, just like he used to, while she threw back her head and laughed herself hoarse. At the end of it all, he rubbed her head and then planted a loud, wet kiss on her forehead.

"You know," she said, "technically I 'm the big sister now."

"I changed your diapers," he said gravely. "You can't undo that."

"Ew!" She laughed again, pushing him away from her. "Don't say that!"

"It's true." He smiled at her. "... I'm so glad I get to see you again. You've got no idea how lonely it's been, all these years."

She did know. But she didn't want him to feel like he'd failed her. So she said, "I'm sorry I couldn't see you before. And I'm sorry you had to be alone. But you don't, now. You get to move on."

He nodded. "Yeah. You and me both, it sounds like."

"I hope," she told him, with a sigh. "See you in the morning?"

"Three hours from now, yep. When you have to be up for school."

She groaned. "High school sucks!"

"I bet finishing it twice sucks, but at least you get to. I dropped out second year."

"I dropped out in fourth," she muttered.

"Orihime!"

"I'm sorry! It was complicated. I'll finish this time for sure, I promise!"

"You better." He gave her the eye. "Or I'll come back and haunt you."

"How spooky," she sang.

"Go to bed," he said from her doorway. "Or else I'll rattle my ghost chains."

She rolled her eyes. "Aye, aye, Captain Ghost Bro."

"Horrible. Absolutely horrible. I raised you to be funnier than this."

"Nope. This is one hundred percent, organic, home-grown Inoue humor. All your fault, face facts and accept it." She lowered herself into her bed further as he laughed, leaving her doorway. "Don't get turned into a hollow while I'm sleeping!"

"I won't!" He yelled back. "Goodnight!"

"Goodnight!" She yelled back. She closed her eyes, fighting off a smile.

Yeah. Things were going to go better this time around. She could feel it.