Title: Karma Cycle
Description: The Shibas notice something strangely familiarabout Kurosaki Ichigo.No pairings. Spoilers for entire Soul Society arc.
Rating: G
A/N: Maybe this was totally obvious but I just put it together. I was wondering where the hell souls were supposed to go when they "died" in Soul Society. Then Zaraki pointed out during the fight with Komamura and Tousen that souls that die in Soul Society go back to be reincarnated into the human world and I thought "hey...!"
My little theory about Ichigo and the Shibas.
Makes more sense if you know about Kaien and Rukia.
Karma Cycle
They didn't know what to think when he first showed up at their doorstep with several other nervous looking high school kids and an old friend who'd become little more then an outlaw.
Kuukaku never told her friend why she wasn't ready to trust the orange-haired, wet behind the ears death god. It wasn't his lack of experience; it wasn't even the fact that she knew nothing about them or their motives beyond what Yoruichi would tell her. That boy just looked so much like him: the same fire in his eyes, the same stubborn set in his jaw. Kuukaku knew she couldn't say "no" to that face, she never could.
It only hit Ganjyu later, after the dandelion-headed brat showed up in his basement. Fighting in West Rukongai he only saw those black robes and that giant sword and he knew he wanted to pummel the guy.
Neither Shiba said a word to the other about the thing they were both thinking. Each tried their best to brush it off as a weird coincidence, but Ganjyu couldn't deny that easy, brotherly friendship that they fell into almost immediately and Kuukaku couldn't quite push that familiar look out of her mind.
There was no denying it though, that under that orange hair was a face that sent chills down both their spines. The ever-present scowl and the missing facial characteristics unique to the Shiba clan couldn't hide the fact that Kurosaki Ichigo, fill-in shinigami from the human world looked just like them.
And also, just like him. Neither of the surviving Shiba siblings wanted to believe that their beloved older brother, the one they looked up to, the one they had been mourning for so many years, could be reincarnated as this 15 year old punk. Secretly, in both of their hearts they knew that their dead brother's soul had flown back to the human world the night he died. He had followed the cycle of rebirth that all souls, both human and Hollow and dead that they would all eventually follow.
There was the strange coincidence that a boy who looked exactly like Shiba Kaien, who loved the shinigami, had become one himself and returned to Soul Society. Even stranger, that he had first run into Ganjyu, then been brought to the Shiba house. The fact that Urahara was involved made the elder Shiba think that it wasn't just a coincidence.
Neither of them would know until much later, after many fights and betrayals and truths uncovered, that maybe Shiba Kaien had found a way to return his favor to Kuchiki Rukia after all.