Chapter Text
The war against Aizen takes two years: tiring, bloody years that almost no one survives unscathed.
Unfortunately, Aizen is only the first. What follows in the next few years is a steady procession of foes looking to eliminate Soul Society, Ichigo, or both.
Ichigo fights because he can do nothing less for the people he loves. He can, and will, protect them with every ounce of strength he possesses. The fact that his circle of friends is ever-widening only pushes him to work harder, faster, longer.
There is always someone standing by him through everything (storming Soul Society, gaining his hollow, losing and regaining his powers), to the point that Ichigo doesn't quite know how to react when the Central 46 moves against him. He doesn't suspect a thing until it's far too late to save himself.
In hindsight, he probably should have expected it. He was a war hero, but he was also a person who consistently disregarded the rules. He made friends with known enemies of the Shinigami (even if they eventually switched sides), and he kept gaining power at a rate that consistently astounded the people around him.
Central 46 had a history of acting out in fear--condemning the Visored, for example--but Shinji and the others had helped Soul Society through more than one crisis since Ichigo had brought them all back together, and everyone could see that things were slowly getting better between the Gotei 13 and their former comrades.
It was unfortunate that some people outside the Gotei 13 seemed to have a problem with that.
Fewer than six months of peace, and here he was, trapped inside his head in a bed at Urahara’s shop, slowly dying from whatever those bastards had done to him while he had been recovering in the Fourth after the final battle. Whatever it was, it was slow-acting enough that by the time Ichigo exhibited any symptoms, the damage had already been done.
If he could have moved, Ichigo would have snorted. Shiro would never let him live it down if he wasted away like this. Assuming that Ichigo saw him again, that is; as his illness had progressed, his spirits had had more and more difficulty manifesting in the living world until they were little more than ghosts flickering in the wind. A short time later, his inner world started breaking apart, driving Shiro and Zangetsu further and further from his mind until Ichigo could no longer see them at all. Thankfully, he could still hear their voices, but even those were growing ever fainter.
It ain’t your fault, Aibou. It's those sneaky government bastards that couldn't even face us head on; had to come after us like cowards. We’ll make ‘em regret it; you’ll see.
Rest, Ichigo, Zangetsu added from the darkness, the deep timbre of his words wrapping around Ichigo like a blanket. You need your strength.
Ichigo almost rolled his eyes, because as much as he appreciated the comfort that his spirits offered, all three of them were ignoring the truth. This wasn't a battle of strength or will that he was fighting, but a battle with time; and time was something the teenager had far too little of at the moment.
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Urahara Kisuke stared at the latest test results before him and sighed. Damn Soul Society for whatever stupid disaster had cut them off from the human world. He needed Unohana--he'd needed her for weeks now--because whatever was wrong with Ichigo, it was killing him, burning away his reiatsu like a child with a fever, and there was no way that he could see to stop it.
Worse, Kisuke had the feeling that if Ichigo died, Central 46 had some sort of plan to keep his soul from returning to them. Manipulating a soul in that way should have been impossible, and was unconscionable, but for a group who had underhandedly poisoned a human boy, Kisuke wouldn't put anything past them.
Not to mention the fact that they had managed to do so under the watchful eyes of not only Unohana and Minazuki, but also Kisuke, Kensei, and Shinji, who had all been recovering in the same room as Ichigo at the time.
Ichigo’s friends had all but moved into his shop when it became obvious that this was no normal illness: Sado and Ishida had taken over their friend’s Shinigami duties as soon as it was discovered that they were cut off from Soul Society, and Inoue spent most of her free time by Ichigo's side, even sleeping on the floor next to her friend given half the chance. More than once, the former captain had caught the young woman wavering dangerously on her feet as she tried yet again to reject Ichigo’s illness, and pretended not to see the frustrated tears pricking the corners of her eyes after every failure.
The rest of the Kurosakis were almost as bad. Isshin, of course, had his clinic to run, but Karin and Yuzu had all but abandoned their university educations in favor of staying with their brother. Karin alternated between anger that Soul Society had betrayed her brother and hope that Rukia, Renji, or one of Ichigo's other friends would come through in the eleventh hour, while Yuzu spent hours ignoring everyone but Karin and Ichigo, sitting at her brother's bedside and talking to him until she went hoarse.
None of them dared say out loud what all of them were thinking: unless Urahara somehow pulled off a miracle, Kurosaki Ichigo was going to die a slow, agonizing, permanent death at the hands of those who should have been thanking him.
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Shinji was worried.
If the Visoreds’ exile had taught him anything, it was always to keep an eye on the hands behind the curtains. Aizen’s betrayal--though infuriating--hadn't cut nearly as deep as their abandonment by the rest of the Gotei 13. Although he had been too emotional to consider it at the time, Shinji suspected that part of the reason the aftermath of the hollowification had been so difficult was because of the feedback loop between the Shinigami and their hollows. The rage that all of them felt for their former colleagues at the time had mixed easily into their new connections with their hollows--the pain and anger of the hollows feeding into the betrayal and loss from the Shinigami--until everything was knotted up in a haze of red. At a time when the two groups could have (should have) been working together against a much greater enemy, they had spent their time trying to tear each other apart.
It took a hundred years and a brash, irritable teenager for Shinji to even consider the possibility that the way the Visored had been dealing with their hollows for the past century was wrong. By the time Aizen made his move against the Shinigami, the group had just barely made peace with the idea that most of the blame for their treatment lay at the hands of the Central 46 instead of the Gotei 13. It didn't really lessen the feelings of betrayal, but it did make them somewhat easier to bear.
And then Ichigo had come barreling into their lives.
Ichigo had taken their broken, bitter hearts and given them something to fight for, and then, as if that wasn't enough, he had given them back their old lives as well. After the war, the Captain Commander had--against the advice of the Central 46--offered Shinji and the others places among the Gotei 13 once more, and although Shinji was the only Visored captain at the moment, Kensei would likely be taking over the Third Division in the near future.
Shinji wasn't too proud to admit that his first impulse had been to refuse Yamamoto’s offer, even with Sakanade’s very vocal opinion to the contrary, and it had taken Ichigo kicking him through a wall (and telling him not to be an idiot), for he and the other Visored to start seriously considering the offer. After a couple of weeks of debating and fighting amongst themselves, the Visoreds eventually accepted the offer.
They hadn't regretted it, either.
The thing was, Shinji had the same sense of foreboding now that he had felt right before Aizen had made his move against them all those years ago. This strange moratorium on visiting the human world made no sense, and as the weeks drew on, his feeling of dread grew. He could tell that many of the other captains and lieutenants were restless as well, paralyzed and angry over whatever might be coming. If nothing else, there were hollows in the human world that needed to be dispatched, and the Shinigami couldn't fulfill their obligation to the land of the living if they couldn't even reach it. Worse, any questions directed toward the Central 46 on the matter were met with vague, incoherent answers that left even the Captain Commander raising his eyebrows.
For now, most of the Shinigami were treating Central 46's newest order as the last, desperate show of power of an obsolete organization, but the captains saw the threat for what it was, and worried about the reason behind the order.
The ball of worry in the pit of Shinji’s stomach told him that no matter what they did, it wouldn't be enough.
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Ichigo knew he was dying. No matter how much the whispered voices of Zangetsu and Shiro tried to console him, he knew that they knew it, too. In fact, in the times when he was still lucid, Ichigo could remember Zangetsu’s fading voice yelling at him from the darkness, and the young man slowly realized that he had probably lost his spirits much earlier in his illness, and that the whispers were only echoes of memories that his fractured mind had constructed to give him peace.
The realization broke his heart every time he reached it, followed just as strongly by the hope that he had remembered to say goodbye to them.
Ichigo took a quiet, wheezing breath and tried to focus one last time on the world around him. He could barely hear Kisuke and Yoruichi chatting in the background, and feel the heat of Karin and Yuzu’s bodies on either side of his, but he hoped they knew how much he'd loved them.
There were so many people he wished he could see again before he died: his family, his friends, some of the people in Soul Society that he’d gotten to know over the past few years. As it was, all he could do was lie there and wait for the end.
Ichigo had no idea what would happen to him when he reached Soul Society, but if Central 46 knew what was good for them, they would stay out of his way.
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Kurosaki Ichigo, hero and protector of the human world and Soul Society, died on a rainy Wednesday morning. His sisters were holding his hands.
Later that night, tucked into bed together like they hadn't been in years, Yuzu turned to her sister and asked, “When Onii-chan died--”
“Yeah, I saw it too.”
Yuzu clutched her sister tighter. “What do you think it means?”
Karin bared her teeth in a fierce grin that would have given anyone but her siblings pause. “I think it means that Ichi-nii’s ghost business isn't done yet, and those Shinigami better watch out.”
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Mere minutes after the death of their brother, a lightning bolt of reiatsu flared in Rukongai, lighting up half a dozen of the outer districts like Christmas trees, momentarily staggering the residents of those areas and catching the attention of almost the entire Gotei 13.
In his office in the Fifth Division, Shinji froze in the middle of a heated argument with Hiyori as he finally recognized the reason for the growing dread that he’d been feeling all morning.
“What the hell is going on?” Hiyori yelled after a moment, her eyes wide with shock. “Why would Ichigo be here?”
Shinji simply stared at her while she ranted, and didn't bother to answer; Sakanade’s comforting touch as she unexpectedly manifested beside him was all the confirmation he needed.
Ichigo was dead.
He wanted to get up, to find his friend immediately, but he had barely taken a step toward the door when he was stopped by a gathering brightness across the horizon. The light spread out, blinding everyone in its path, until it had swallowed up the whole of Soul Society and Seireitei.