Disclaimer: I don't own it. I just worship it.
He had made a pact. That was all that mattered.
So as he fled the scene of the fight, wondering how he could still be of use when he was so mangled, so slow, so weak, hat was the moment when he gave in to the despair. The look on Ichigo's face told him everything. You can't protect yourself. How can you help me? And it was true, all true.
He had confronted the ones who came. He had thought he could at least keep them occupied until Ichigo came to finish them. And they had been just as strong as he suspected they were when he ordered Orihime to go and take Tatsuki with her. He was the one who was not as strong as he thought.
It wasn't as though he hadn't questioned his worth before.
In those hoyden days where he was just another bully on the streets of a dusty Mexican town, every blow he threw was a question. Do you understand me? Do you see I can hurt you too? Can you see now that I am here and real? Because as he understood it then, the only way not to get hurt was to hurt the other person first. It was Abuelo who taught him otherwise.
When he set himself between Yastora and those men intent on doing him harm, he had pierced the boy's wall. When the beating was over and they had come home, Sado had silently wept without knowing why. And Abuelo had talked to him with that gruff voice, telling him what he needed to hear. And the words had stayed with him, so by the time Ichigo had come across him getting the crap beaten out of him in that dark alley, Sado's principles had been set, his path clear and his hands never rose to hurt anyone for his own sake.
Which made it all the easier to accept Ichigo's offer, and to offer up his hands for the sake of others.
So why now, when the need was the greatest, were his hands suddenly slow and weak?
And if he could not fulfill his end of the bargain, would his friends abandon him? He told himself Ishida's solitude was self-imposed, but he knew they were keeping a distance. They could not bear to see him in such a state. That was the look he saw in Ichigo's eyes.
Back home, in that dark, empty apartment is where it dawned on him. He peeled off his shirt and headed to the bathroom to get a good look at his wound, which didn't really hurt at all. The blood on his chest was dry. The wound itself was shallow. It was a miracle Ichigo had come when he did. But to Ichigo, like his little sister Karin, any harm to anyone was unacceptable. Ichigo's look wasn't about Sado's helplessness, but his own. Yastora wondered how he could have forgotten this.
And then he wondered how he could become stronger so he could make it so that look would never cross Ichigo's face again.
He had made a pact, after all.