BREATH OF LIFE

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach or Tokyo Ghoul. Or the songs mentioned from this point onward. Kudos to people who recognize the songs, though.

Shout Out: This one is a little bit darker than usual, but with having Tokyo Ghoul in the mix, is kind of unavoidable. It's interesting that Tokyo Ghoul is, at least for me, far more realistic than Bleach, both depiction and characters-wise. So this won't be your usual run-of-the-mill fic either. Ichigo is not so much of a hero but a leading character - at least partially - shaped by his brutal past and circumstances. Being a half-ghoul is not all picnic and daisies.

Warnings: AU-verse, SLASH; trigger warning for non-con.

012 Breaking The Habit

Ichigo wasn't one for violence. Not always, anyway.

The penchant for violence, if one could say that, bloomed in the dark night of his third day in the Tokyo.

The coffee could carry him on only so far. He had been exhausted to the bone – from the row with Goat-face, to the calming his scared sisters, assuring them he would be alight so far away from them, barely biting back the reason why he was going away from them (because he was a monster).

He was a scaredy-cat, a cry-baby, not worth of the name his beloved mother gave him.

What kind of protector caused the death of his mother, the sun of their family, and then got changed into a flesh-eating monster, anyway?

In some ways, Ichigo thought that him being a monster was a fitting punishment for his thoughtless actions when he tried to save the little girl that changed into a big, scary monster.

He had escaped the confines of his apartment in the dead of the night, walking through the noisy, kaleidoscope-bright streets, barely swallowing back the saliva at the scents that surrounded them, the meat surrounding him, so delicious like his mum's curry –

But that didn't solve his problem of being just a small boy, and most importantly, a hungry one.

His sight blurring with pain, both one in his gut and one in his heart he ducked into one of the less reputable streets, hoping against hope he would be safe here. Safe from temptation, safe from –

A rough hand grabbed him by the shoulders, and Ichigo cringed, curling into himself –

"Oh, what do we have 'ere?" A raspy voice chuckled into his ear. "You are simply delicious." Another hand pressed a sweet smelling rag into his face, forcing him to inhale the fumes and making him dizzy and after two inhales-exhales all Ichigo could see was darkness.

Ichigo didn't want to recall the moments when he woke up.

Even now, more grown up and stronger, he still shuddered when remembering the face of the man who whispered dirty things in his ears when he touched him in those no-no places his mum told him about, telling him how beautiful he was and how much pleasure he would give the man, just like a greedy little bitch as he tore his trousers off his body–

-and Ichigo snapped. Something reared within him, furious and angry and hungry and he felt an intense heat on his lower back, with a wet sound accompanying it and it was like having an additional pair of hands, only on his back, ropy, and strangely smelling causing the man to widen his eyes with horror, as he tried to let go of Ichigo, but Ichigo's small hands grabbed his wrists, barely encircling half of them, but crushing them all the same, causing the man to emit half choke and half gurgle of agony and then, the handsonhisback shoot forward, small and fragile and yet enough to pierce the man's stomach, causing the delicious scent spill out, along with the blood, like one of mum's delicious meat buns and Ichigo was so very very hungry –

In the back of his mind he belatedly heard the bad man's pleading and begging with him to not – just not - but Ichigo was too far gone both on rage, hunger and terror to listen as he dug his clawed hands into his guts, dragging out the slimy, but oh-so-sweet-smelling something, lifting it to his lips and biting –

Later on, he had been found by a well-meaning passerby, and assumed a collateral victim/witness of the man's brutal murder.

Ichigo's listlessness and his clothes having been more or less torn apart earned him the sympathies of the police personnel, along with their frustration, because Ichigo didn't tell them anything apart of the standard spiel of him having been taken by the bad man who then did some no-no things to him - or at least tried, as someone had interfered and apparently killed him in a traumatizing enough murder to leave the poor kid in a shock, strong enough to cause an amnesia, especially when the kid had been found lying on the man's cadaver, his face, and the front of his body smeared with cooling blood, but thankfully none of it was of the boy's.

The entire affair had been hushed up, both for Ichigo's and public's sake, though Ichigo's caretaker attempted to coddle the boy for a good month or two to let him recover from the bloody adventure he had unwillingly been a part to.

There was at least one good thing out of the entire mess - after a long time, Ichigo was full again, even if he did feel sick at the mess he had caused in the process.

After that first, disastrous forage into the Tokyo's underbelly, Ichigo became determined to protect himself to almost scary degree. He convinced Matsuda-san to sign him a waiver for attending the martial arts school in his free time, which he attended almost zealously. Even if he had been termed as an ankle-biter at first, his thirst for learning and stubbornness quickly elevated him through the ranks. He stumbled in his training with weapons - bigger ones were a no-go for him, but at least he managed to begin to hit the center with knives.

Three months later, Jackal made his debut in the underground. Not that anyone knew of it, because the ones who came into contact with him usually ended dead and in pieces one little orange-haired boy hauled to his apartment piece by piece as if they were his bloody prize.

Ichigo broke his habit of being a helpless victim, but the price of survival may have been too high.

He became a monster.

/To Be Continued/