Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach or MHA.
Rating: T
Words: 8,676
Warnings: description of a burn victim; torture, injuries, panic attack.
Notes: I was so excited to publish this chapter as I was writing it…and then it just did not want to be written. That's why I'm a few days late with it, apologies. I had Ichigo's parts of this fic done in advance and then nearly yelled trying to get Shōta's done. Anyway, I'm back from my graduation ceremony and from vacation, so please enjoy!
Chapter: 5) Not Close Enough to Missed Moonlight
Saturday, April 27, 2X75
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"Father has come to rescue you, my son."
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He woke up screaming.
"Get away from us!"
He—They—He didn't know what was going on.
Reiatsu burst from his—their—his body in his—their?—his alarm.
They—He—They had been—was?—drowning and suffocating and dying, and everything they felt was exhaustion and panic.
He couldn't breathe. Why couldn't he breathe?
Where was he?
What was—
Something was touching them. Something was touching him!
With heavy, uncoordinated limbs, he struck out wildly, trying to bat away whatever was touching him. He felt the contact. There were lights above him. Lights? He was just drowned in blackness—sick, oily, wrongwrongwrong blackness. Lights?
"Kurosaki-san!"
Who was?
Someone was here.
Through his panic, the light became clear as colors and images solidified. White, gray. More white. Sterile, so sterile. So much white, white all around. No, no, no.
He was in Yhwach's castle. Sterile white all around him. White sheets, white curtains. White floors. Only some gray. Gray and white stones. Gray, not enough black. Where was Zangetsu? Where was Zangetsu? Where was his Moon?
"You'll get your swords back once you learn to listen to reason, my son," Yhwach said to Ichigo's silent form across the table they were sharing food. Ichigo couldn't eat. He was barely present. How long had he been sitting here? What was the point of anything anymore? "I do not trust you fully not to misbehave like before. You must wait and be obedient as you have been."
His raggedy old Shihakushō had been thrown away. It was exchanged for a dark shirt and white pants once Ichigo had given up on resisting. His fingers idly picked at one of the cuffs of the dark shirt just over the metal bracelets on his wrists. What was the point? Who was left?
A white tablecloth covered the light gray metal of the table. White plates and clear glass populated it. Around them was the white stone of the castle. Tapestries decorated the walls, bright white and blue-tinged light shone from the scones on the walls, and Quincy Cross-pattered rugs stretched across certain parts of the room. No color. White. Gray. Minimal amounts of blue.
Sterile blue. Gleam-of-light-on-surgical-tools blue. Not star-blue. Not Ishida's-thread-on-the-soft-white-of-his-Quincy-clothes blue.
Yhwach's cape was the deep black of his The Almighty. Black like an oil slick. Black like a sickness. Disease.
Some kind of pastry was slid in front of him. (When was the last time he had anything sweet? Who was still able to make sugary stuff like this in this day and age?) "Is that understood, my Ichigo?"
"…Yes, Father."
The few bites of the sweet pastry he had managed tasted like ash.
The only black was Yhwach's cape. No, don't get closer!
"Kurosaki-san. I need you to breathe."
Father was too close, too close!
But…He never called him Kurosaki-san.
Breathe? He wasn't breathing?
"I'm not this Yhwach person. And yes, I need you to breathe or you're going to pass out, dude."
Who? Didn't matter. Not Him.
He sucked in a deep breath, and it exploded out of him, shuddering out of control. His chest spasmed around choked air as he struggled to take a normal breath. He took another, then another, but it was getting out of control again.
Blonde hair. Black hair. Bright shirt. Gray shirt. Not Him? Not Him. There was someone in front of him. There were two people in front of him. Haschwalth maybe? No, no, Haschwalth meant pain and torture. These people were not torturing him right now.
The blonde one—long hair, vivid green eyes, glasses—was close to him and was saying something. Right, words. "Okay, your breathing's getting bad again. I'm going to touch you, okay? So we can get your breaths to match mine."
Touch?
"Nnnnn." No, no, no, touch was bad. This close, this personal. Touch meant hurt, pain. Manipulation. Touch used to be fighting, but now it was—or had been?—manipulation. But…
…They said there was no Father here.
"D-Dizzy," Ichigo choked out, clutching the fabric of his samue to his chest in a white-knuckled grip.
The man with black hair leaned a little closer. Why was he in so many bandages? Who hurt him like? They were all over his body. Ichigo hadn't seen someone that wrapped up since—
Ichigo looked on with exhausted horror at the body at their feet. He felt almost numb.
He wanted to throw up. To yell and bellow his rage. To wrap his night sky reiatsu—gold star flecks like tiny knives and silver streaks like the moon's violence—around his fists and fight for revenge.
But, Kami, he was too tired, too numb. Too many years of this horror. Tired of this shit.
He was going on almost three days without sleep, but it was his fault this happened. If only he had stayed more alert, had gone to the east district of the stronghold first instead of the west, and had Shunpoed over the building that acted as a school one last time.
The body was burned all over. Not by fire, but by reiatsu, from the signature burn patterns on…all over. His curly black hair was nearly all gone save for a thatch at the back of his head. Red and brown and deep maroon and charred black was all that was left. The body in front of him was of a young boy, smaller than Yuzu and Karin had been at his age of ten. Not enough food. Ren. His name was—had been—Ren.
A young boy had been reported missing for over a week. Taken by the Wandenreich in the last fight.
This just wasn't right. The sense of sheer wrongness he felt as he stared at this child's body made Zangetsu shriek his vengeance against Yhwach. Ren had grown on Ichigo (and Zan) as he taught him and some of the other children in the stronghold English when he could. Small and fast, Ren had been good at scavenging with the adults for anything they could find on excursions: berries, herbs, any fish that hadn't been swallowed by Yhwach's blackness, anything. Zangetsu had also thought he should become a thief but had held his tongue when his mother picked him up from English lessons.
In the clinic twenty minutes later, he helped his dad wrap Ren's body from head to toe in bandages to the wailing sorrow of his mother in the waiting room.
(They had no idea where Ren's soul went, in this world where life and death had no separation.)
Something touched his shoulder, and he couldn't help his flinch. Before his mind realized what he was doing, he jerked back and rolled out of bed, and came to a defensive position. Arms forward, legs wide. Reiatsu rolled off him before he could even put conscious thought into it. Ward away, ward away.
His wrists burned. "Fuck!" He clutched them hard to his chest.
The only thing he could hear for a long moment was the sound of his own panicked breathing. Hospital, white walls. His vision wavered but began to come into focus. He was not in His castle. Not in His castle. There were machines beeping. His wide eyes snapped around.
The blonde man with green eyes that had been speaking to him before was clutching hard to the railing of Ichigo's hospital bed. The man with black hair who was covered in bandages was on the floor in a half push-up position. Ichigo's eyes snapped around. There was a pink-haired nurse with a vial in her hand panting near the sink and another one clutching to the doorway. She had bubbles pouring from her mouth as she wheezed. From just outside the doorway, he could see a guard crumpled on the ground of the hall. Their labored breathing was punctuated with their desperate gasps for air.
"K-Kuros-s-sakiii," one of them choked out.
Oh fuck, oh fuck.
No, no, no. Kami, what was he doing? He was in a hospital, for Kami's sake.
He sucked in a hard breath, feeling like he had just Shunpoed for three hours straight. When he reigned his reiatsu in, the pressure from it dissipated, allowing everyone else in the room to breathe normally again. He wasn't sure who these people were, but if they were regular mundane humans, he could have accidentally killed them.
He sputtered out an apology as he backed up against a wall. "I'm sorry, 'm sorry, 'm sorry."
His knees gave out under him, making him slide down the wall to the floor. He clutched himself into a ball, knees drawn close to his chest. His whole body hurt. His chest hurt, his wrists hurt, everything hurt. The hospital samue did little to protect against the cold of the wall and floor, but he was used to that. His castle had been like that. Cold.
Don't think about it. Don't think about Him.
His head hurt. His chest hurt. It was dark.
"Kuro-," someone cleared their throat, "Kurosaki-san." They sounded close to him, making him flinch.
"I'm sorry. Please, I didn't mean it."
He heard the shift of clothes in front of him, and this time a different voice from before spoke. By the voice, it wasn't the blonde man with green eyes. "It's okay. It's okay, Kurosaki-san." The voice was deep and steady. "You did not hurt any of us. You were scared. That's okay."
That was okay? He almost killed them!
"You neither killed us nor harmed us. We're here and okay. Quirks react to our emotions in times of stress."
Oh, he said that out loud.
He heard a pause before the person spoke again. "I am not going to touch you without permission, but I think it would be best for you to remove your hands from your hair, Kurosaki-san. You're hurting yourself."
In his—?
He flexed his fingers, and he did find that they were, in fact, tangled within in hair. Hard. He didn't realize he had been tugging on it…which would partially explain why his head was hurting.
After what seemed to be a long minute, Ichigo managed to collect himself enough to lift his head from his knees. Through his messy, long hair, he could see the man covered in bandages in front of him. The man wasn't close enough that it made Ichigo uncomfortable, but he was near enough that he could see his dark eyes clearly through the bandages. Still, seeing all the bandages on him made a pang of guilt go through Ichigo's chest. His reiatsu could have crushed this man to death, especially.
"Relatively speaking, are you alright?"
Once the man had asked him that, he realized that he must have gone quiet for a while. Ichigo swallowed the hard lump in his throat. "Y-yes. I…who, who are you?"
"Ah," the man in the bandages looked towards the blonde man who recovered himself and was now standing. He turned his attention back to Ichigo. "I do have you at a disadvantage here, it seems. We know you, but not you us. My name is Aizawa Shōta, Pro Hero Eraserhead, and you saved both myself and my students. Some thanks are due."
There was that term 'Pro Hero' again. A quick bolt of recollection went through his mind. The image of a crumpled man in black covered in blood flashed before his eyes and connected to the man that was in front of him. He couldn't believe it. It wasn't like they had Kaidō (1) here. At least, not that he knew. With recognition came relief. He was so glad that the man—Aizawa—was alright.
"Kami, I—you…" He wasn't even sure what to say.
"Yeah, me." Ichigo could hear the small smirk in his voice. Instead of irking him, it somehow made him feel better, hearing that he was alive. "Nice to officially meet you, Kurosaki-san."
"Yo! Nice to meet you officially!" The blonde man lifted his hand in a wave as he stood above Aizawa. Even just through a wave, he was much more animated than Aizawa, body moving in almost a wave with the hand gesture. "Name's Yamada Hizashi, Pro Hero Present Mic. Been wanting to meet the man who saved my husband and the students, ya dig?"
Ichigo blinked. His eyes flicked from Yamada to Aizawa then back to Yamada. He would have never guessed they were married. Then his brain latched onto the second part of what Yamada said.
"The students, they're okay? Asui, Midoriya, Mineta? And the monster, the Nomu? It didn't come back, did it?" Their smudged and scratched-up faces came to the forefront of his mind. Those three, along with the other children he remembered seeing fighting against the adults—the 'Villains.'
He watched them exchange another look between themselves before Aizawa answered. "Yes, all of the students are safe, especially those three, thanks to you. Your Quirk sent Shigaraki and Kurogiri scrambling. The students were all treated with any medical assistance necessary and are all back in their classes."
Quirk. That's the same word Midoriya kept using. "Good," he nodded a little absently. "Good, I'm…I'm very relieved. Yes."
He knew he was starting to drift. He could feel the cold floor against his bare feet and the thin cloth of the samue on his chest. His body was shifting to operate automatically.
He heard a whisper of Zangetsu's voice, but he sounded so far away.
The panic that was beginning to bloom in his chest and numb his limbs was quickly racing through his veins. Where was Zangetsu? Where was his Zanpakutō? Where was his Moon?
"Excuse me," the nurse who had been hanging onto the doorway when his reiatsu had flared out said. "I am happy to hear that Kurosaki-san is coherent and that you have had a chance to talk, Aizawa-san, Yamada-san," she addressed the other two men, "but I do need to look over Kurosaki-san and inform the doctor of his status. If you could step out of the room, please?"
Right, nurse.
Medical. She would check on him. Place of medicine.
The bare floor was cold against his feet.
"Ah, sure thing!" Yamada said to the nurse, helping Aizawa to his feet and towards the door. "We'll be waiting outside. I'm sure you have a lot of questions, yo, and we'll do the best we can to answer them." With that, the two men were gone of the door was shut to give Ichigo some privacy.
"Okay, now that it's just me, my name is Ayano, and—" she broke off as she looked him over, "Kurosaki-san, are you with me?"
"A-Ah nnnnno," he managed. He tried to tell her that he was beginning to dissociate, but his mouth wasn't quite working the way it should.
Thankfully she understood his symptoms and guided him back to his bed. She was careful not to touch his wrists and began to help ground him.
Fuck.
Shōta Aizawa was having a long day.
Shōta Aizawa was having a weird freaking day.
He was still tired from his injuries and Recovery Girl's Quirk, so having to rush to the hospital at night to see Kurosaki struggling as soon as he awoke was draining on him. His body ached, and whatever pressure Kurosaki's Quirk let out was an intensity that he had never felt before. His skin had broken out in a cold sweat and his muscles screamed at him as he was forced to his knees, barely being able to push himself up. Hizashi, at least, had been able to hold himself up.
That black energy from his Quirk made the hair on the back of his neck stand up (or rather, he could feel that same sensation underneath the bandages covering his neck.) He had seen multitudes of Quirks throughout his years as a Pro Hero, but nothing like Kurosaki's. It was already so multifaceted. Thinking about the pressure the black energy exuded made the curious part of his brain itch yet the baser part of his instincts yell.
Kurosaki had not even realized he had been letting his Quirk lose. An automatic response, Shōta was able to recognize.
Thinking about Kurosaki's defensive reaction and the feeling that his Quirk caused Shōta to feel, thinking about his wounds and the metal bands and the prolonged dehydration and malnutrition Hizashi had told him about Kurosaki, none of it painted a pretty picture.
As they were leaving and walking into the hall, they heard the nurse attempt to ground Kurosaki.
"Deep breaths, Kurosaki. What can you feel?" was the last thing they heard before they turned the corner.
Once they got into the waiting area, Hizashi practically dumped himself into a chair with a groan. This late in the evening, there were not many people here, especially not on this floor. His long legs stretched out ahead of him as he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Shōta sat on the armrest of the same chair and carded his fingers through the hair of Hizashi's ponytail. He could tell his husband had a lot going through his mind by the line of his shoulders and the crease between his brows. God, same.
"So," Shōta began.
"So," Hizashi repeated, then looked up at him. "We have one puh-retty traumatized guy on our hands, huh?"
Shōta nodded.
"And this is all before we had a real conversation with him. He knows our names and that's about it. We have no idea where the heck this dude is from, whom he works for or if he even works for someone, what his history is, and what kind of approach we need to take with him." Hizashi looked back down the hall towards Kurosaki's room. "He's been hurt, that's a fact. A trauma response like that doesn't come from nothing." Hizashi looked back up to him, "What are your thoughts? You're better at this than me."
Shōta raised his brow, ignoring the ache it caused. The doubt in his voice was palpable, "I think you're forgetting that most victims prefer you, 'Zashi." On more than one occasion, Shōta's face had been off-putting enough that people preferred to talk to his bright and energetic husband than himself. He had been told multiple times that he had a resting bitch face.
Without much thought behind it, Hizashi pulled Shōta's hand into his. Shōta enjoyed the warmth of his hand that seeped through the bandages. "You know what I mean."
Working as an Underground Hero, there were a lot of situations that the Daylight Pros did not normally see or come across. The phrase "the freaks come out at night" was something that Shōta thought was just a ridiculous saying before becoming Pro, but after going Underground? No, it was completely true. He had been working with the police for years dragging out the nastiest rapists, drug producers, sex traffickers, weapons dealers, kidnappers, and more. Even with all that experience under his belt, his own personal history made him empathize a lot more with the people he saved for than it probably should have.
Hizashi's own personal history, from all that Shōta learned, sometimes made it hard to do the work he did. One look at the shackle bands around Kurosaki's wrists had made Shōta's eyes snap to his husband. Hizashi's birth family had hated his Quirk. Shōta didn't like to think about what they had done to him before he was taken in by his adoptive family, his real, loving family. It was the reason why Hizashi always wore a light layer of foundation when he went out.
"I think we're both qualified." A moment, then, "He's under UA's jurisdiction for now, I know that. At least until we found out where he came from or if he has a family to help him." Kurosaki wouldn't be the first person UA has helped out until they were able to return to their normal life. Usually, the people they've helped had been friends or families of UA students or staff. A house fire, homes vandalized, Villain threats—all some cases they've had to help people through.
"That's the thing, Shō," Hizashi got up—careful not to dislodge Shōta from the chair's arm—and began to pace, pointed index fingers winding like he was spinning his thought in the air, "the authorities have already run his name through every system they have. Not one Kurosaki Ichigo has popped up. Even going by facial features, there's no one who li like him. It's like he doesn't exist!"
That…was not what Shōta expected to hear.
He had come across a handful of times where the people he had saved had neither a birth certificate nor a registration under the Public Quirk Registration. All of these cases had been young children whose families had either died, sold them, or had the child taken from them. For an adult to have no record of existence at all? It was a red flag, and it made the wheels in his head turn faster.
He could already guess how the meeting on Monday was going to unfold.
They shared a quiet between them for a bit as they waited for the nurse. It was broken, however, when Hizashi brushed the hair from his face. "How are you?" and before Shōta could reply, he cut him off, "And if you say fine, I'm going to let a nurse know you should be readmitted."
"I'll throw you out a window." It was mostly automatic and without (much) bite. He sighed. "If you want the truth, I'm aching. Kurosaki's Quirk—the pressure of it—aggravated some of my injuries." He wanted his medicine.
He saw Hizashi open his mouth, and how it was Shōta's turn to interrupt, "But, nothing reopened. So no freaking out. It's too late for that." Both in time of the evening and order of occurrence, but at this point, those were semantics.
"Are you going to let me get a word in?"
"I let you get in plenty of words every day."
Hizashi returned to his seat, looking all like he wanted to shove Shōta's face away. It made Shōta snicker.
About twenty minutes later, the nurse who had been with Kurosaki appeared in the waiting area. "Yamada-san, Aizawa-san," she addressed them. "Kurosaki-san is able to see visitors now. He's actually asking for you."
Hizashi stood up faster than him. "How's the guy doing?
She looked at him and then Shōta who stood next to him before breathing out a sigh. A few shiny bubbles drifted on her tired sigh. "He has become aware again—he had a brief episode of dissociation. This is normal from what I can see he has been through in the record we are building for him. Whoever did what they did to him was neither kind nor had any good intentions in mind. As he is under UA's care for the moment, any medical information will be sent to Recovery Girl and Nezu-kōchō, too."
She saw them nodding, so she continued. "He's been through a lot. I'm relieved he didn't managed to rip out his IV. Yamada-san, I know you have already been updated earlier this week. Aizawa-san, is there anything you do not know?"
"No," he shook his head. "I have been informed earlier this evening, "over food and in the car, "but thank you."
She gave them a short nod before leading them back to the room. The guard was back to standing near the door. The weird looks that the guard was giving the door, then them, then back to the door was…odd, to say the least. Could it have been because of Kurosaki's Quirk? A guard used to working on the high-security level of the hospital should have been used to abnormal occurrences. Shōta cataloged this for later. Either the guard was incompetent or something was weird enough to get to even him.
The nurse knocked on the door before opening it. To Shōta and Hizashi, she whispered, "He's been asking about his swords for some reason."
Of all the things to ask for, that's what he wants?
To Kurosaki on the bed, she said through the open door, "Kurosaki-san, Yamada-san and Aizawa-san are here. If you need anything, please feel free to use the call button."
Kurosaki gave her a tired, small smile. "Will do. Thank you, Ayano-san."
And with that, the door was shut behind Shōta and Hizashi.
Compared to the sweaty, panicked mess that Kurosaki had been twenty minutes ago, he did look comparatively better. He had been given a hair tie for his messy hair and his skin did not look as clammy. This was the first time that Shōta was looking at Kurosaki in detail (earlier didn't count due to the hecticness). The bruises underneath his golden brown eyes damn near rivaled Shōta's own on a bad day after exam grading plus patrols. Even from by the door, he could see scars breaking up the black double-X tattoos around his wrists under the metal of the shackles. There was a slight hollowness in his collarbones and cheeks, but it was like he had been given food before they had met him to help with that.
He remembered how Kurosaki had looked shooting up from his bed. He had the stance of someone clearly trained to fight, held with the ease of someone who had to do so often. Automatic defense. Shōta often saw a lot of trained fighters working Underground. Different styles, different methods, different potentials. The automatic defensive response of his Quirk and the fighting stance he took as easily as breathing was another thing Shōta cataloged in his head. Possible threat, yet possible victim. Tread carefully.
"Uh," Kurosaki cleared his throat, awkwardness apparent in his tone, "hi, I guess? Sorry, again about earlier." Shōta noticed his hands tangled in the fabric of the hospital blanket.
Shōta gave him a placating hand. "Like I said, nothing to worry about. Quirk accidents aren't uncommon."
"Riiight," Kurosaki nodded, but Shōta could sense that he was doubtful. Had he not had accidents with his Quirk when he was younger? From the reports of what his Quirk could do, Shōta would be incredibly surprised if that was the case.
"The nurse—Ayano, right?—told us you were asking for us." Hizashi offered a friendly smile. "Are you feeling up for a talk?"
There was an unease that surrounded Kurosaki that was easy to pick up on. He looked between the two of them before answering. "Y-yeah. Yeah, if you wouldn't mind. I feel like I'm incredibly lost here."
He and Hizashi took that as an invitation to sit down in the two chairs available in the room.
"Maybe you can help us while we help you, ya dig?" Hizashi said. He settled himself in an easy position in the chair, arms spread against the chair's back and legs crossed in front of him. A textbook picture of someone at ease and personable.
Shōta knew it was completely on purpose, both to ease Kurosaki and observe him without any suspicion.
"What do you need from me?"
"Not so much needing a thing, but rather some information," Shōta explained, "in order to better assist you. We tried to look up your family to see if they could help you, but there is no information on you." At the mention of family, Shōta saw Kurosaki wince and grip the blanket even tighter. His fists were going white-knuckled.
Kurosaki didn't say anything for about a minute, but the bob of his Adam's apple was prominent before he did get to speaking again. "I don't…My, my family is dead," his voice was thick with emotion.
If his family was dead, there would have been death certificates at the very least. And yet, he didn't seem to be lying.
"I'm sorry to hear that," Hizashi frowned, learning more forward.
Kurosaki cleared his throat. "But wait," he looked at them with growing confusion, "you said there was no information on me? Nothing about my family either? No Kurosaki Mas—" He choked on his words here, like he had been about to say something but couldn't get it out. In a quieter tone, he asked, "N-No other Kurosakis on record?"
"No other ones that look similar to you..." Shōta said gently. He didn't want to rush his own questions for Kurosaki, and he had to keep in mind that the man has been through some shit to leave him feeling lost.
Hizashi offered his input. "If you don't mind me asking," he began, "are you foreign-born? Sometimes records from overseas get lost or messed up. My mom's cousin had that happen to him when he was moving from Korea to here. Took like three months to get everything straight."
They didn't expect Kurosaki to snort. "Is it the hair?"
"The hair?"
"Growing up, a bunch of people thought I was foreign or that I dyed my hair. Pretty much slapped me with the delinquent label." He shook his head, "No, I was born and raised in Karakura-chō."
In where? Hizashi looked to be equally lost. He'd never heard of Karakura-chō before. Covering it up, Shōta went for the casual route. "I'm afraid I don't travel nearly as often as I should." A lie. He'd been all over Japan with Hero work throughout the years. "Could you tell me where Karakura-chō is?"
"Oh, yeah sure. It's in western Tōkyō, kind of near the Ome Line. I know Hinode-machi isn't too far." (2)
Now, Shōta knew for sure that couldn't be. The only place matching that description was the ward of Hosu-shi. (3) He sent Hizashi a quick look. Thankfully, after knowing each other for as long as they had, Hizashi had an idea of where Shōta needed the conversation to go.
Hizashi picked the conversation up. "So unlike this one," he pointed to Shōta, "I've been around that area before. But uh, I've never seen Karakura-chō before. Not even on a map. Where you're talking about, near the Ome Line and Hinode-machi, that's Hosu-shi."
Kurosaki blinked at him and looked like he said the sky was green. "What?"
"Yeah. No Karakura-chō."
"I've never heard of Hosu-shi before," Kurosaki's confusion and anxiety were growing by the second. They could hear his pitch slowly rise with his words. "I—I've been to Hinode-machi before with friends. I had a classmate move from there to Karakura-chō during my freshman year. What do you mean there's no Karakura-chō? That doesn't make any sense." His tone was growing louder towards the end, which was a clear sign that they had to calm him down fast.
Shōta's phone made a fast appearance in his hand. He pulled up the map of western Tōkyō and zoomed in on the area that Kurosaki described. Even looking at the map, there was no Karakura-chō just like there hadn't been the last time Shōta had used his phone's navigation before the trip to USJ. He stood up to hand his phone to him. "Here."
Kurosaki quickly snatched it out of his hand—Shōta didn't take offense—and the man's eyes quickly flicked back and forth over the screen. Tension lined his jaw and Shōta didn't miss his hands begin to shake.
"Where am I?"
"Musutafu, Shizuoka Prefecture."
The look on Kurosaki's face made Shōta feel like he could have been saying complete and utter nonsense like the sun wasn't bright or rain never existed.
"I don't…I…" Kurosaki looked lost for words.
"Do you," Hizashi stood up, careful to telegraph his movements, and placed a hand on Kurosaki's shoulder, "do you feel like you're misremembering something? Or having memory problems? Passing out can do that. Goodness knows I have!" He tried for some lightness to comfort Kurosaki. That was just Hizashi's way—he connected with people through touch and tried to lighten heavy hearts. Had a huge heart.
"No. No, no, no," he looked up from his phone to look at Hizashi and then Shōta with desperation, "I'm not from here."
"We could kind of tell. You really do look lost."
Kurosaki shook his head. "No, no. I'm not from this whole, whole," he broke off and made a wild gesture, "wherever the hell this is. I know this is Japan—hell, we're all speaking Japanese—but this isn't a Japan that I know."
A Japan that—Okay, been through a lot or not, this guy was beginning to sound a few cards short of a deck.
"A Japan that you know," Shōta parroted. "What is the Japan that you know? Because I'm pretty sure there's just the one."
"Shō!" Hizashi hissed at him.
Kurosaki leveled him with a look that read he did not appreciate Shōta's remark. "One that doesn't have a giant manga-looking guy running around or weird fucking people attacking kids with powers! And since when do people have powers like that? Are you all Fullbringers or something? I barely felt any reiatsu from that All Might guy despite his strength, or the students, or you guys."
Hizashi tilted his head. "What's a 'Fullbringer?' A type of Hero?"
"What is 'reiatsu?'" Shōta asked.
"What do you mean 'What is reiatsu?' Your students and associate were using powers—you have to have been manipulating reiatsu to some degree. Regular mundane people don't have powers!"
"Our powers," Hizashi started slowly, "you mean our Quirks?"
At this point, Kurosaki was beginning to look a smidge hysterical. (To be fair, his growing hysteria was understandable given his situation.) His voice climbed in pitch again. "What the hell is a 'Quirk?' Is that what you call powers here?" The beeping of the heart monitor was increasing the longer this conversation was happening. "Where is Zan—Where are my swords? What did you do with them?" That edge that Shōta sensed from him earlier, the body language that spoke of a man who had been fighting for a long time, was rising and rising and rising.
Sensing that the conversation was taking a turn, Hizashi removed his hand from Kurosaki's shoulder. Kurosaki was growing wary, so touch at the moment could set him off. Hizashi held up his hands, wide and open, to show that he meant no harm. "Hey, hey, it's okay! It's okay, we're not here to harm you."
Kurosaki had a rather impressive bend to his brows as he narrowed his eyes. His shoulders were a hard line of tension. No longer tangled in the blanket, his arms were ready to push himself up and move at a moment's notice.
"Promise," Hizashi pressed earnestly.
A moment of tension seemed to last like a year as they waited for Kurosaki to calm down. The moment passed, to both of their relief, and Kurosaki relaxed his arms and fists. To Shōta, he asked once again, "I want to know, where are my swords?" Although less hysterical, his tone was no less serious.
What is so special about those swords of his? Shōta was familiar with attachment to a good piece of equipment. His own tanto had a lot of meaning to him and was a weapon that he kept in excellent condition. However, it would not be one of the first things he would ask for when waking up in a hospital. No, that position went to Hizashi and his students. He began to call it 'Zan' something. No article before it. Perhaps it's a name? An attached name would mean his swords are significant to him—but why, though?
"As you appeared in the middle of UA's campus—the building the fight was in," he clarified, "yourself, and by extension your weapons, are under UA's jurisdiction. My husband and I are Pros who work at UA. We want to help you. Your swords are safe at UA as our associates have been holding them until you woke up."
As soon as he said the word 'safe,' he could see visible stress fade from Kurosaki's face. He's never seen anyone that attached to their equipment.
"Ah, okay. Good, good," Kurosaki said. What he said next, though, was what really through Shōta for a loop.
"What is UA?"
Ichigo was out of it, to say the least.
Talking with Yamada and Aizawa gave him some answers to the questions he had, but spawned a million more. There would be a meeting with them and another group of people on Monday so he could get more answers and they could see what happened to him. Apparently, they were teachers who were part of a school that taught kids with superpowers…while also having superpowers themselves. They told him that he fought against supervillains after being spat out of some purple portal—a warp gate it was called—alongside a guy who was, quote, "the Number One Hero in all of Japan," end quote. Oh, and in a place called Musutafu? Which Ichigo had never heard of in his life other than in the Star Wars movies. Mustafar. Musutafu.
Kami, Ichigo felt like he was plopped into some manga series. Or more like an American comic book series.
Hearing that Karakura-chō didn't exist had freaked him out more than he realized. Seeing the weird-looking people when he was spat out of the portal had been the first clue that he wasn't home. These people looked pretty healthy, had decent-looking clothes, and weren't looking over their backs 24/7 for His monsters. The kids had superpowers and there had been a monster—a Nomu—unlike any of His monsters of blackness. Fucking weird. He hadn't thought they were in anything other than Japan since everyone was speaking Japanese. He figured that there would have been at least a version of Karakura in whatever this crazy place was. Maybe even some version of his family.
(Or even Kisuke.)
So, to hear that Karakura-chō not only did not exist, but in its place was some place called Hosu-shi (Hoth, really?) and there were no records of any Kurosakis related to him?
Ichigo felt he was apt in having his freakout.
Logically, now, he knew this wasn't his Japan. His Japan was an apocalyptic aftermath of Him and failing to stop Him.
Looking out the window of his hospital room, he felt a little detached from himself. Like he was living in a dream. No dissociation like earlier, though.
Through the glass of the window, he watched the night sky. The large silvery crescent of the moon shone behind light wisps of clouds, making them glow around the edges. Although the lights from all the buildings drowned out a portion of them, they still managed to glitter brilliantly. The dark of the night was not a solid black but had hues of the deepest purple and blue in it. Colorful, even during the darkest time of the night. A blinking light caught his attention. His eyes tracked it across the night sky, and he realized that it was an airplane.
Air travel had been rare not long after….
…After the Convergence.
He was not sure how long he stared, but for what must have been a while, he watched the sky outside his window. The lazy blinking of an airplane as it crossed from one point to the other. The clearness of the moon's crescent, the colors of its corona and halo. The shine of all the stars, the colors…
Kami, when was the last time he saw a sky decorated with stars like this?
His eyes stung.
After the worlds converged, the skies had never been the same, day or night. Ichigo had spent many a day looking out over the stronghold and up to the sky. It should have been impossible for the sky to look like fractured glass, and yet it was like that every day. Sometimes, he had watched large sections of the sky crack and fall behind the horizon like old windowpanes. At night, it had been looking through a kaleidoscope. The stars had often been hidden behind thick spiderweb cracks. The few that had shone through had never stayed in the sky. Meteor showers had been common. However, unlike the meteor showers before the Convergence, ones that were exciting and dazzling to watch, post-Convergence meteor showers had been quite the opposite. These had brought a sense of sorrow. When watching the stars fall, Ichigo had known those stars would never return. Like watching ships fall to earth and burn through the atmosphere, those stars would never be seen again. Common constellations had fallen apart as they years had passed.
The moon, to his dismay, had been hard to see clearly. The night sky had been filled with cracks—like the daytime sky had been—but these cracks had shifted and changed angles. Almost like a broken mirror. Because of this, instead of seeing the moon in its singular totality, the moon had been broken into puzzle pieces. Broken bits of white, silver, yellow, and even gold against a sky so black it had seemed to devour most of the light. Ever-hungry, ever-black.
The sky clouded over for a bit, covering the silvery crescent of the moon and the glitter of the stars.
Just like how his Moon was separated from him.
I fucking hate being in here, Ichi. It's like being in there all over again.
Zangetsu's voice was quieter than usual in his mind. He didn't have to explain what 'there' meant. They both hated his time forced away from Ichigo in the dampening case that He had held Zangetsu's blades in. When they had been captured by Him, one of the first things that He had done was to order that Zangetsu be separated from Ichigo. Zangetsu's dual blades had been shoved in a reiatsu-dampening case that had been stored very close to His personal chambers for 'safe keeping.'
Although they had been able to still talk to one another, it had almost been like talking underwater. From a mile away. Sometimes with cotton plugged in their ears. The distance had made their connection weak, and the spells and seals on the case had made it almost painful some days. On other days, it had just made it near impossible to hear Zangetsu at all. Towards the end, where Ichigo had just lost his will to keep going—which he still felt incredibly shameful about—Zangetsu keeping their body conscious and present had put a lot of strain on his Zanpakutō spirit.
Being away from Zan again, it was like he was back in the torture chambers while Zangetsu was near His personal quarters. A barrier of distance and a buffer of seals.
At least this time, seals weren't involved. Zan was just away from him. In a school of all places.
I know, Zan. I hate it, too. Ichigo brushed his fingers against the blanket over him. The fabric was softer than he was used to, which was pretty pathetic considering hospital blankets were itchy ninety percent of the time. The world ending would do that. But, those people seem…okay, for the most part. They don't seem like they are purposely keeping you from me. Not like Him.
He felt a faint pulse of agreement from Zangetsu. This place, it's weird. It doesn't feel the same. There're people around us—a blind man can even tell that—but it barely feels like they're there. I know you mentioned it before but really think about it.
Ichigo stilled.
Then he went over it in his mind.
He was still reeling from being spat out of the portal Kisuke—Kami, Kisuke, why didn't you just come with me? With me and Zangetsu? —but now that Zan mentioned it, he was right. He hadn't noticed it with the hecticness, exhaustion, and anxiety that had made their way to the forefront when he came to wherever this place was. Looking back, he agreed with Zan. Now, Ichigo was not as skilled in sensing reiatsu as some of his allies, but intense training during all the years of the Convergence had allowed him to grow to a fairly decent level. He was no professional sensor-tracker, but he was proud of his progress.
For him to feel reiatsu so low that it was barely even there…
Even regular humans back in Karakura-chō had enough reiatsu to register as alive. It was jarring to think about the lack of it here. Like, Ichigo knew there was a guard in the hall as he had heard him earlier, but unless he truly focused hard on looking for a spark of the guard's reiatsu, it was like it wasn't even there. Even his Yuzu and Karin—dammit, don't fucking cry, Ichigo—even his sisters had larger reiatsu signatures when they were still young enough for Ichigo to have to lie about what he had been doing at night.
Neither Yamada nor Aizawa knew what reiatsu was, which still didn't make sense to him since they had superpowers. Quirks, he reminded himself. Quirks. They had Quirks. Who the hell named superpowers 'Quirks?'
Want something that might cheer you up?
He tilted his head even though Zangetsu couldn't see it. The curiosity was enough.
Pretty sure I scared some kind of talking animal-looking thing.
"A what?"
I know, right!
More thoughts for his hamster of a brain that wouldn't stop running the wheel.
Although he was still exhausted, Ichigo knew that sleep would evade him tonight. That was fine. It wouldn't be the first all-nighter he would have pulled. He had done plenty in high school while catching up on his studies and when he had been scouting or fighting after failing to stop Him. In the hospital room, he listened to the clock tick. He sighed, resigning himself to racking his brain for something that would help him. Shakespeare's A Mid-Summer Night's Dream it was, then.
"Act I, Scene 1
Athens. The palace of THESEUS.
[Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, and Attendants]
Theseus. Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace; four happy days bring in
Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man revenue."
Ichi… He heard Zan's faint voice call out to him.
Without Zangetsu's physical manifestation of his blades close to him, he felt like answering aloud would make him feel closer to him. "Mhm?" He idly played with the fabric of the hospital blanket in-between his fingers. Helped with his anxiety.
Zangetsu didn't answer right away. Ichigo felt his brows furrow when he felt hesitance come from the other part of his soul. Holding back was not in Zangetsu's nature.
"Zan?" he said quietly. "What's wrong?"
It was another long moment of hesitancy before his Zanpakutō spoke. He could feel the equivalency of a shrug from him. …When ya get me back, I…Can you…
He sent a pulse of reassurance to Zangetsu. The distance between them made it feel like he was sending it down a miles-long hallway, waiting for any echoes to come back. "Whatever it is, you can tell me. You can always tell me."
Will you, the echoing nature of Zangetsu's voice made his shaky inhale more emotional, will you lay me under the full moon?
Ichigo couldn't help the soft, "Oh," that passed through his lips.
To an outsider, the request might have sounded odd or even sexual in nature. To Ichigo, who knew Zangetsu as well as Zangetsu knew him, understood what his Zanpakutō was asking. It was intimate and personal, deeply part of them both. Zangetsu was the Slaying Moon by name and nature. Neither he nor Ichigo had been able to see a moon in its entirety in the several years after the Convergence. An unspoken yet open secret: a Zanpakutō, and by extension their wielder, was stronger the closer and deeper they were to their element.
To Tōshirō, one of the best-known examples within the Seireitei, he and his Hyōrinmaru were the most powerful in cold climates. Strong, surrounded by ice. (Ichigo missed Tōshirō both as a friend and comrade. He had become closer to the taichō the more he hung around Karin and had grown to know him even better.)
Even Kyōraku-san and his Katen Kyōkotsu were known to be stronger within the dark and shadows. (Ichigo missed Kyōraku-san like he did Tōshirō. The older man had been busy trying to get the remains of Seireitei's survivors in order. The few times that Ichigo had been able to sit down with him, it had been quite pleasant. The calmness he exuded was a balm that Ichigo long missed.)
Kisuke and his beautiful Benihime were a pair that Ichigo knew almost as best as Zangetsu. His dear scientist and crimson princess were steeped in the smell of blood down to their reiatsu, whirling in delight in carefully planned chaos and glee that—
He shook his head. Thinking about Kisuke and Benihime like that was going to send him down a trail of dark thoughts, their bond image tainted by Yhwach forcing him to watch what he had done to Ichigo's beloved.
(If he kept thinking about it, he would start weeping throughout the whole night.)
Zangetsu sent the best pulse of comfort he could to him.
Although the former two were the best examples of Shinigami and Zanpakutō being stronger in the depth of their natures, that was the 'open' part of the secret. How far their natures extended, to what degree, and what else their domain affected was the not-so-open part of the secret. Ichigo himself never fully told anyone the full depths of his and Zangetsu's domain. Zangetsu was the Slaying Moon—very clear that being under the moon made them stronger as that was the meaning of Zan's name.
Sitting under the moonlight gave him a calm that he had not experienced very frequently as of late. Not being trapped in the castle as he had been. Stars and starlight—they made his blood sing in the best way. Space dust drifted through his veins. Solar eclipses connected him to the moon like nothing else could as the moon was so close to earth. When the moon moved in front of the sun, he could feel his reiatsu flare inside of him, matching the coronal filaments that shone in the sky around the moon. His breathing would match the ring of red solar filaments, rising and falling to the pulse and glow of them.
Ichigo was born of space with stars powering his heart and moonlight energizing his soul. Space dust was dispersed when he exhaled.
Being trapped in His castle had been an additional torture atop the physical and emotional hell they had done unto him. Even now, sitting in his hospital bed with the blinds up and out of the way, he wasn't close enough to his domain, to his element. He wanted to hear the stars sing. He couldn't hear them, disconnected as he was.
His fingers drifted upward to rest against the window like he could touch the night scene through the glass.
"Of course, my Moon. Of course I can."
Zangetsu pre-Convergence would have griped about the sappiness of being called Ichigo's Moon. Seven years down the line of living through the end of the world as they had known it plus torture under His watch…well.
Suffice to say, Zan never turned down hearing Ichigo call him that.
A distant echo of a fondness-embarrassment cocktail that made him smile fondly. "Should I not call you my Moon, then?"
It took a few moments to hear Zan's answer, but when he did, it was coupled by…squirming? Hn, shut up.
The room was quiet save for the beeps and chimes of the medical equipment for a while. He continued to watch the night sky: the heavy crescent of the moon, the twinkle and glow of the stars, and the occasional blipping dot of a plane in the far distance. The tiredness of reiatsu exhaustion was calling him to sleep.
G'night, Ichi.
"Good night, Zan."
Published: 5/26/2023 (Published on FF: 12/24/23)
(1) Kaidō is healing Kidō. Ichigo does know some Kaidō in this fic.
(2) "Chō" in Japanese is used for town. So Karakura Town is Karakurachō or Karakura-chō. According to the Bleach wiki, Karakura is indeed in western Tokyo.
According to MHA, Hosu City is located west of Tokyo and UA resides in Musutafu which is somewhere in Shizuoka Prefecture. For reasons later in the fic, the the distance between UA in Shizuoka and where I think Hosu City would be in Musutafu (since both Hosu and Musutafu are fictional). In this case, Karakura in Ichigo's world would be where Hosu would be in the MHA world.
(3) Hosu-shi is Hosu City, a ward in Tokyo.
A/N: If it wasn't clear, Ichigo at this point does not refer to Yhwach by his name. It's a trauma effect/response. Also, a side-effect of the mind manipulation Yhwach had/has going on with him. Once Ichigo broke, he referred to Yhwach as 'Father.' Sometimes he'll slip and refer to Yhwach as Father in this fic, but for the most part, his automatic reference to him is He/Him/His. So whenever you see a capital male pronoun (He/Him/or His) instead of a name, that refers to Yhwach.