Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ichigo has had the key for as long as he can remember. It hangs around his neck by a worn leather strap that always seems about to break but never does. The key is black iron and rough in his hands, even after years of worrying it with his thumb. He can’t quite tell the shape, but it always fits whatever lock he needs it to, whatever door’s on hand.

The key opens the locks of many places. When he was younger, he traveled more, jumping between worlds of glass and taffy with a thought and the click of a lock. Now that he’s older, though, he tends to stick to more practical travel— things like school and home and work.

There’s a lot of work, nowadays. He’s got nothing better to do, what with his already minimal social life shrinking to nothing thanks to uppity ghosts and a family that’s afraid to admit they regularly see said ghosts around the dinner table.

He’s not bitter. Of course not.

His favorite place to go is the Palace. It’s not the most creative name, he knows, but he made it up when he was nine, and anyway, there’s not many more fitting titles for the high stone arches and tall windows that make up the throne room Ichigo always ends up in. It’s a beautiful place, built into a cliff face and overlooking a blue sea and white sand beaches. It never rains, winter never comes, and no matter how far Ichigo walks along the shore, the Palace is always in sight, and Ichigo is always alone.

The Palace kitchens are always stocked. Despite a lack of cooks, there’s always fresh bread and roasted chicken. There’s always eggs for breakfast and cakes for dessert, and bowls of fresh fruit when he’s feeling peckish. There’s no fish, or rice, but if Ichigo really wants it, he can always go home.

Time stops, when Ichigo goes to the Palace. It stops whenever he leaves his world, really, but the Palace is where it matter most. Ichigo has spent years in its halls, studying this particular language or honing that particular skill. He spent six years mastering the piano, another three on guitar and eight on the violin. He only has a guitar in his father’s house, but the Palace always has what he needs.

If he were to count his true age— not whatever age he returns to when he comes back the his world, his real age, including all the time he’s spent in the Palace and other worlds— he’d probably be closer to three hundred. Give or take.

The Palace is his favorite place, though, and the only place he visits with any frequency anymore. It goes something like this:

He’s at school at eight, he gets out at three. Once he’s out, he goes to the Palace for lunch, gorging himself on warm, buttered bread and whatever else strikes his fancy while he does his homework. After that, he has a quick nap on the lounge chair on the balcony overlooking the sea. Once he wakes up, he swims for half an hour, showers, changes into his work shirt, stuffs his school uniform into his bag, and leaves the Palace for Unagiya’s. He stays until eleven, often until after dinner, then heads for home. He makes sure his father hears him come in, slipping into his bedroom and locking the door. He draws the curtains (you can never be too careful these days, not with shinigami and their inherent need to ignore doors) and goes to the Palace for a proper, eight to twelve hour rest. When he wakes up, he has a breakfast of raspberries, buns, and milk, puts on his work uniform, and leaves the Palace for his night job at eleven-thirty, coming out a block from the twenty-four hour gas station. He works until seven, goes back to the Palace, showers, finishes his homework, spends some time in the library (it always has what he wants to read, whether it’s a trashy romance novel or the latest medical journal), maybe sleeps some more, then goes back to his room to get ready for school.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

He’s never tired, he’s never bored, and he always has more money than he knows what to do with. Sometimes, yes, he admits he gets lonely, but that’s easily cured by being busy.

Boredom is the true enemy here. Ichigo learned that quickly.

About six months into his… Exile, maybe? Punishment? Whatever it is that caused his sudden case of lone wolf, his biology class turns to the subject of genetics. His homework is to create a family tree and to map out some more obvious genetic traits. Ichigo’s at a loss. He obviously can’t do his father’s line, and he has nothing to work with on his mother’s. He’s going to fail, and he’s going to fail hard.

When he goes to the Palace after school, he decides to spend a day or two moping, eating chocolate, and drinking sweet wine before making his way towards the library for something to take his mind of his impending failing grade.

When he finally reaches the library (he tripped on the stairs twice thanks to the constant state of drunkenness, sue him), there’s a stack of books waiting for him by his favorite armchair. It’s strange, he thinks. The Palace has never done anything like that for him before.

Curiosity peaked, Ichigo flops into the armchair, reaching for the topmost text. It’s as thick as his fist, bound in rough black leather, with a small, five-point cross stamped into the cover.

The Book of Gold .

"It isn’t gold, though," he murmurs to himself, flipping it open. The title page is yellowed from age, but the ink is legible— The Book of Gold . In smaller lettering underneath, the subtitle reads A Brief History of Sacred Quincy Lineage .

Ichigo pauses.

"Huh."

Flipping to the index, he finds a list of twenty-five names, all broken up by main families and branch families. He feels himself go cold when he reads Kurosaki.

He flips through the book, careless of its age, until he finds the right chapter, skimming names and titles and noble deeds until he finds it, until he finds her.

He does.

'Kurosaki Masaki (1964-1996), the last pureblood princess of the First Line. She is survived by her half-blood son, Kurosaki Ichigo-oji, and her daughters, Kurosaki Yuzu-hime and Kurosaki Karin-hime. Due to her marriage to a shinigami noble, children of her line are ineligible for the throne.'

Three sentences. His mother has three sentences in this giant goddamn book, and two of them aren’t even about her. Ichigo doesn’t know what he wants to do more: tear this book in half, or tear his father in half for keeping Ichigo in the dark (again).

The book’s within reach. In minutes, it’s confetti, and Ichigo has nothing to do but fume as he picks up the next one.

Noble Women of Purest Blood is the title.

Great.

It’s like a car wreck, reading about the Kurosaki line, but once Ichigo starts, he can’t stop, devouring each book like it was made of chocolate. His mother’s side is a mess of murderers and assassins, tyrannical lords and silver-tongued ladies, all fighting to keep their blood untarnished through arranged marriages and— in a pinch— inbreeding. His mother’s sister (dead, now, complications during childbirth) was married to her father’s first cousin, for fuck’s sake. By the time he’s done the stack, he thinks she’s probably lucky her parents died before she was marrying age— thirteen, according to apparent Quincy law.

Ichigo wants to cry. He wants to throw up. Eventually he does both, settling into a restless sleep in one of the parlors in the East wing.

He stays in the tower for three weeks, mood fluctuating between sorrow, disgust, and impotent rage. He hates secrets. He hates his father for keeping this from him. In his darker moments, he hates his mother, too.

He usually feels guilty when that happens.

Sometime at the end of that three weeks, though, he buckles down to do his homework. He finds a helpful tapestry right around then, outlining the Kurosaki lineage all the way back to the apparent Quincy King (Ywach, dates unspecified. Ichigo thinks he might still be alive). There are photographs in some of the texts, which Ichigo cuts out and glues to a poster board next to small blocks of text listing names, dates, and obvious genetic traits. Ichigo’s orange hair is an apparent recessive gene, only appearing three times in the entire line— his still-living great-great-great-uncle (a war general), his great-grandmother (a suspected black widow), and his mother’s elder brother (also named Ichigo). The work is methodical, and maybe even calming, once he beings to accept that his family is essentially a chapter from Game of Thrones.

(It helps that he finds some good ones in the mix. Kurosaki Aohime took in impure Quincy orphans. Kurosaki Takeo served as an advisor to the king, helping push forward marriage rights laws in an effort to stop the high suicide rates among young brides. Not all so bad, really.)

He settles on five generations, to illustrate the point of his hair, sets it aside to dry, then gets dressed for work.

He doesn’t think he’ll be speaking to his father anytime soon.

Chapter Text

Out of curiosity, Ichigo starts testing the library. One day, he decides to read about Orihime’s line. A long line of rice farmers, for the most part, save for the blip that is her parents. Chado’s family has a colorful history involving conquistadors and human sacrifices. He doesn’t bother with Ishida’s, if only because he’s already read about Ryuuken’s apparent arranged marriage to his mother and just— no. No.

He won’t touch the Shibas. The thought of his father still makes his hands shake.

He does read about the Shihoin family, though. Interesting stuff. He figures he’s probably read more classified files than Yoruichi should ever know about. After that, he reads about Urahara. There’s not much of note before he met Yoruichi. Just another piece of Rukongai trash, fair-skinned and fair-haired like most of the residents of the mountain districts. Some of his missions though… Ichigo has to stop reading.

Why are there always pictures?

Ichigo realizes, some six Palace years of reading about everyone’s lives, that he might be doing something creepy. He dismisses the thought quickly. He’s been watched all his life— by Aizen, by Urahara, by Isshin. He’s probably being watched now, in all honesty. It’s only fair he gives as good as he gets.

He keeps to himself, he ignores and avoids Orihime’s tentative offers to hang out, and works his ass off between lazy days on a perfect beach. The money in the bank continues to accumulate, untouched by things like food or booze. Why bother, when he can get it for free, when he can get trashed in the comfort of the Palace and wake up to a hangover cure?

Everything’s golden, until his father catches him walking in the door after a day of fixing a leaky faucet at Unagiya’s.

"I thought I had a son," Isshin remarks as Ichigo toes off his shoes. "I was beginning to think you were some sort of fever dream, with how little the girls and I see you."

Ichigo winces a little at the mention of his sisters. In his effort to avoid his father, he’s been avoiding breakfast, the only time he ever actually sees the girls anymore.

"I’ve been busy," he says shortly.

"Yeah, I figured. You haven’t been home much." Something in Isshin’s tone changes. "Not even on school nights."

Ichigo freezes, finally looking at his father for the first time in… seven, eight years? Technically.

"I was going to the bathroom and your door was cracked open. You weren’t in your room." There’s an odd glint in Isshin’s eye. "Every time I’ve checked since has been the same."

"I got a night job," Ichigo tells him stiffly. "Didn’t think you’d approve."

"Must be an easy job, if you’re as well-rested as you look," Isshin remarks. "Where do you work?"

"The gas station. You know the one."

Isshin hums.

"I don’t appreciate the secrecy," he says, getting to his feet. "Just so you know."

Ichigo barks out a harsh laugh.

"Secrets suck, don’t they?" he says. "It really sucks when people don’t tell you important details of their lives. But hey, sorry. I wouldn’t really know, would I?"

Ignoring the look of hurt on his father’s face, Ichigo goes upstairs, shuts his bedroom door, and goes back to the Palace.

That man has the balls to bitch to Ichigo about secrets? What a joke.

Ichigo spends three days fuming, then goes back to get ready for work. His father’s still downstairs when he decides to use the front door, but he pays the older man no attention.

The lock clicks shut behind him.

*.*

It’s one of those rare instances where Ichigo has people to walk home with when he beats up the thief. The owner of the bag kind of creeps him out, but he shakes it off, dismissing the guy’s offer to pay him back with a wave and returning to his… acquaintances.

Then, the guy shows up at his night job.

"I do really owe you something," the guy tells him, but there’s something in the way he holds himself, something like intimidation, and Ichigo shakes his head.

"What you owe me is space," he says. "Get the fuck out of my store and leave me alone."

The guy goes, and at the end of his shift, Ichigo quits.

He’s not having any of that bullshit.

*.*

After the guy shows up at Unagiya’s, Ichigo knows he needs to nip this in the bud. He has a name to go with his face, and that seems to be enough for the Palace. He reads about murder, betrayal, and painfully complicated plots for a repeat performance. Well, Ichigo’s not having any of it. A war was enough for him. If he gets his powers back, it’s because he ought to have them, not because some fucker wants a revenge plot. This isn’t The Count of Monte Cristo .

But what’s he supposed to do?

He can’t fight this guy, not anymore. Half a soul ain’t much these days, and he’s not much for creeping into people’s bedrooms in the middle of the night—

Oh.

Ichigo knows people like that. He knows several. One of them’s even in reach. All he has to do is drop off the information, give him an address or two, and, and—

Would Urahara even do anything?

It depends. Maybe if Ichigo leaves a clue…

No. He’ll drop off the information, see if he’ll do anything. If he does, well, good. If he doesn’t… Ichigo will figure out.

Fumbling for a clean sheet of paper and a pen, he starts making notes— names, dates, addresses, pictures. All of it. Most of it’s disgusting, some of them are sad, but every fact is full of blood.

He puts everything in one neat, organized folder, marks it properly, and steps out of the Palace onto Urahara’s doorstep, drops off the file, and disappears back inside.

Then, with no night job, he goes home for bed.

*.*

Ginjo never does find him again. Ichigo considers a job well done.

Chapter Text

"A file was left on my doorstep the other week," Kisuke says one day over tea. "An interesting one."

"How so?"

"It had evidence of Kugo Ginjo’s involvement in at least three substitute shinigami deaths over the last forty years," he says. "One of which involving Hirako Yusuke."

Isshin winces.

"Really?"

"The handwriting was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it," he continues. "But the evidence… It was quite damning."

"What did you do?"

Kisuke sips his sake.

"I took care of it, of course," he says. "Ginjo and the rest of his Fullbringers. Ichigo-kun was their next target, you know. Ginjo had already made contact with several of his friends, if not Ichigo-kun himself."

Isshin’s eyes widen slightly.

"Ichigo didn’t say anything— but I guess he wouldn’t." He shakes his head. "He’s been keeping secrets, Kisuke. More than the average teenager."

Kisuke hums.

"People keep secrets when they don’t trust anyone," he remarks. "Is there any reason he doesn’t trust you?"

"Nothing he’d know of. Ichigo’s a forgiving sort. He makes his peace quickly."

"Ichigo-kun has had half of his soul torn out," Kisuke says mildly. "That might lead to a few changes in temperament."

"Yeah, but we’re going to fix that. Soon."

"Yes." Kisuke fiddles with the edge of his hat. "Have you told him yet?"

"I want it to be a surprise."

"The first time was surprise enough already."

"He might get impatient. Best to tell him after everything’s ready."

"If you say so, Isshin-san."

"I do."

*.*

"We have a new client!"

Unagiya slaps the order down next to Ichigo’s plate. He swallows noisily and sets down his chopsticks, nudging the paper so he can read it without spilling.

"Urahara’s Shouten? Seriously?"

"They’re having some electrical problems and need an extra hand," Unagiya tells him. "Why?"

Ichigo scoffs, shaking his head.

"No reason. When do they need me?"

"ASAP. Something about fridges."

Experiments, more like. Well, whatever. Ichigo’s getting paid for it.

"Let me just grab my tools."

"Yeah. You need a lift?"

"No, I’ll be fine. It’s nice out."

"Forecast says rain."

"So?"

Unagiya rolls her eyes but lets it go. She’s long since accepted Ichigo’s strangeness

"Alright. Call me when you’re done, okay? I might need help with Jun-san’s garden."

Ichigo gives her an off-handed salute before returning to his meal.

"It sounded like he needs you right away, Ichigo."

"I know the guy. His fridges can wait." smiles around his mouthful. "He’s a prick."

"Just don’t keep him waiting, alright?"

"Yeah, yeah. I know."

*.*

Ichigo steps out of a back alley entrance about a block from the Shouten, toolbox in hand. Spring’s come early, and Ichigo can already smell the thunderstorm that’s brewing.

The Shouten looks about the same, save for a few fresh weeds. He walks in like he used to, neutral expression firmly in place.

"Kurosaki-san, you look well."

Urahara hasn’t changed much either. His smile is just as false as it’s always been.

"Hey," Ichigo gives him a wave. "Unagiya says you fucked your circuits."

"Ah. Yes. Tessai isn’t around to help me, and I’m rather… I’m not much of an electrician." The blond’s smile turns guileless as he speaks.

Ichigo snorts.

"Yeah, whatever. Let’s have a look, shall we?"

An hour later, Ichigo is changing out shorted fuses, scowling at the damage.

"Did one of your experiments overload this shit? This whole thing’s a mess," he asks as Kisuke makes his way down the steps of the storage basement. "It looks like it caught fire."

"It did. I put it out, but…" Urahara trails off. "Can you fix it?"

"I’m gonna need a few things, but yeah."

"How long will it take?"

"Well I’ve got a few parts I’ve gotta pick up, but that’s not ’til later, so… Two more hours?" Ichigo rips out a melted wire. "What a mess."

Urahara chuckles and goes quiet.

"What are you listening to?"

"Hm?" Ichigo glances at the portable radio. "Just some mix CD. My ex made it."

"And ex? What have I missed?"

"Nothing. We didn’t last long. She was clingy." Ichigo hums. "Good music taste, though. It’s not you find a Violent Femmes fan around here."

"Do you understand it?"

"Oh, yeah. English is pretty easy for me." After three years of constant study, it is, but he’s not going to mention that.

"What’s it about?"

"Well—" Ichigo rips out another wire. "It’s about a guy who can’t take care of his family, so he kills his daughter."

"That’s— really?"

"Yeah."

"A strange thing to put on a CD for your boyfriend," Urahara notes. "I’d be worried."

"She was crazy," Ichigo agrees. "It was over before it ever got serious, don’t worry."

There’s another pause, and then,

"How have you been, Kurosaki-san?"

Ichigo almost hurts himself with how quick his head whips around.

"What do you mean?"

The blond looks so earnest, dammit.

"I just want to know how you’ve been coping. Your father hasn’t said much, besides that you’ve been busy."

Ichigo shrugs.

"I’ve been working a lot," he admits. "And studying."

The blond nods.

"But how have you been?"

Ichigo thinks about lying, but then, this is the first person who’s asked him, even if he is a manipulative bastard.

"Bitter," he says at last. "Pissed."

"… I thought as much." The blond takes a seat on one of the sturdier boxes. "I’ve… Your father wants it to be a surprise, but… I’ve been working on something. A way to return your abilities."

Ichigo goes stiff.

"It’s almost done," Urahara continues carefully. "Probably another month or so, but… It’s been in motion since you lost your powers. I… I wanted to make sure you weren’t completely abandoned."

"I’ll be back," Ichigo says suddenly. "Just… Wait here, okay? I’ve gotta grab some stuff."

He bolts up the stairs, and even though he’s no match for his old mentor, Urahara gives him a few seconds head start. Ichigo will want to have a moment to himself, and anyway, he wants to know the reaction— the reaction he’s not supposed to see.

Ichigo doesn’t do what he expects, however. Kisuke catches him a block away, fumbling with the key that’s always hung around his neck and pressing it into the latch.

He slips through the door, slamming it closed behind him.

Frowning, Kisuke peers into the room.

Ichigo’s not there.

Chapter Text

"Motherfucker!"

Ichigo’s destroying the gallery. Statues made of marble and porcelain crash to the ground and shatter as his foot flies and his hands grapple with over-sized fauns and too-beautiful women as he throws them across the room.

"That— fucking— prick—" Ichigo punctuates each word with a small, perfectly smooth sphere made of some sort of red stone. It smashes beautifully.

Liars. He’s surrounded by liars. Liars and secret keepers with no definition for 'need to know'. Shit, if anything, he needs to know everything . His pound of flesh is knowledge. He’s not even asking for vengeance.

Maybe he should. He deserves it.

He fumes for a week, give or take, before collecting the parts he needs from a spare room (the Palace always comes through, at least), before he takes a deep breath and steps out.

Kisuke is peering through the window of the building.

"Nosy bastard, aren’t you?"

The blond jumps as Ichigo steps out onto the street, box tucked under one arm.

"I—" Kisuke fumbles. "I simply realize that you’ve… it’s a big piece of news."

Ichigo nods.

"It is," he agrees. "Don’t worry, Urahara-san. I’m not mad at you."

"You’re not?" The blond sounds mystified, and Ichigo can’t help it; he laughs.

"Being angry with you for keeping secrets is like being mad at a dog for humping furniture," Ichigo says. "You can’t help yourself, that’s all. Come on. Let me finish up and I’ll be out of your hair."

"Kurosaki-san—" Kisuke stops, pulling down the brim of his hat. "You’re right. We should get this finished up."

They head back inside. Ichigo works quickly, humming along to a Carpenter’s cover as Kisuke putters around the basement.

"You like Western music," he remarks as he digs through boxes. "I never expected that."

"Lots of people like Western music, it isn’t that unusual."

"Well, yes, but I don’t think the music you appear to enjoy ever really makes it to Japanese audiences."

Ichigo shrugs.

"I guess. My mom—" he pauses, then clears his throat and tries again. "My mom, she used to collect records. Had a whole room dedicated to them, even."

Kisuke clears his throat.

"I remember," he says quietly. "I remember helping your father clean that room out when the twins were born."

"Yeah, I wasn’t too happy about being a big brother when that happened." Ichigo sighs. "Mom kept some of it, but Isshin threw everything out when she… after the funeral. I tried to save it, but— well."

Kisuke hums.

"I have some of her collection here, you know," he says, trying for nonchalant and mostly succeeding. "I found them recently when I started cleaning the place out. Would you like them?"

Ichigo goes very still.

"I— really?"

Kisuke nods.

"Of course— I was only ever storing them, after all." He smiles. "They’re yours."

Ichigo swallows, bowing his head.

"I’d appreciate it," he says. "Thanks, Urahara-san."

"It’s my pleasure, Kurosaki-san. I’ll stop by and drop them off at the Clinic sometime, if you like."

"Oh— no. How about I stop by and pick them up?"

"Kurosaki-san, I don’t think you’ll be able to carry the entire collection home on your own—"

"I won’t. I’ve got a car."

"Do you?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Do you have a license?"

Ichigo grins.

"After a fashion."

Kisuke huffs a laugh.

"I don’t know why I didn’t… never mind. Are you almost finished?"

"Yeah."

"Then stay for dinner."

Ichigo pauses.

"I—"

"We miss having you around, you know," Kisuke says, looking up from the junk he’d been sorting through. "Ururu’s been pining."

"That’s not funny," Ichigo says, wagging a screwdriver at him.

"It’s true, though." Kisuke peers at him earnestly from under the brim of his hat— a good face, for a false one. Ichigo almost can’t tell. "Please. Stay for dinner."

Ichigo’s chest hurts, just for a moment, and he thinks, what could be the harm?

"Sure."

*.*

There’s something off, about Ichigo. Kisuke recognizes that quite quickly. Something about his mannerisms, about the odd expressions that play across his face whenever Kisuke asks him a question.

He doesn’t leave directly after dinner, which is surprising, but Kisuke supposes the subject matter— something from the latest aeronautics magazine— is enthralling enough to keep anyone’s attention, so long as they know what Kisuke’s talking about.

Ichigo, it seems, can keep up.

His language is strange, spoken precisely and in clipped, short sentences, like Japanese is a second language. Long after Tessai and the children have gone to bed, long after Kisuke is certain Ichigo won’t go home tonight, he tries something.

He switches to English mid-question. Ichigo doesn’t appear to notice, and answers in kind. They continue in English for a few minutes, then Kisuke switches again, this time in French. Again, Ichigo doesn’t notice.

Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, Greek, Italian. Ichigo doesn’t notice any of them, not until he gives up and switches back to Japanese.

Ichigo blinks.

"You…" he sighs. "Okay."

"You have a skill for languages," Kisuke remarks. "I was unaware."

"I’ve had a lot of free time, since everything." Ichigo waves his hand in an awkward, encompassing sign for everything. "Needed a hobby."

"How many languages do you speak, Kurosaki-san?"

Ichigo shrugs.

"Well, I’m working on Latin and Aramaic now," he admits. "I like the ancient languages. Um… I don’t know. A lot."

It’s impressive. Superhuman, even, if he truly managed to acquire such a proficiency for so many languages in so little time.

He tells Ichigo so. Ichigo laughs, but again, it’s off. Like he knows something Kisuke doesn’t know.

"Well, you know, I’ve always been a fast learner," he says, shrugging. "And like I said, I’ve had a lot of free time."

Kisuke nods sharply at the deflection.

"Of course," he says. "Will you stay the night? It is quite late, you know."

Ichigo glances at his watch, eyes widening at the time.

"Ah, shit," he says. "No, Urahara-san, I ought to go. I’ve got school tomorrow."

"Are you sure? Your room is available."

Wrong thing to say. Ichigo goes tense at the mention of the room.

"No," he says tersely, pushing himself to his feet stiffly. "I should go. Bye, Urahara-san. Thanks for dinner."

Ichigo’s gone before Kisuke can answer.

*.*

Ichigo doesn’t have a car, technically. What he does have is the Palace, which always gives him what he needs. All he needs it a garage door, the key, and twenty minutes later, he has a brand new 1971 AMC Hornet, which definitely isn’t noticeable at all.

Kisuke’s jaw drops when Ichigo pulls up.

"American?" he asks. "Where did you find that? Where do you keep it?"

"A friend’s," he says vaguely. "He owes me a favor."

“An American car?” Kisuke cocks his head. “Expensive to have here. Did you ship it in or did you buy it secondhand?”

Ichigo shifts. His tells have always been obvious.

“I rebuilt it,” he says, and it’s a lie. “Had the parts shipped over a few at a time over the last couple of months. Gave me something to do, you know?”

“On top of your language studies?”

“Every guy’s got his hobbies, getaboushi.”

"… Well, Kurosaki-san, it seems you’re full of surprises." Urahara regains his composure with an easy smile. "Well, let’s get started, shall we?"

*.*

The scope of Kisuke’s basement is far greater than Ichigo ever thought. It’s clear there’s some sort of shinigami fuckery going on, just based on the seemingly endless hallway Kisuke leads him through, though how Ichigo can see it, he’s unsure.

"Here we are," Kisuke says, pausing in front of one of the hundreds of identical doors. "At least, I think."

The smile he gives begs a chuckle, but Ichigo only rolls his eyes.

"This basement come with the house?" he asks. "Or is this a product of drunk science?"

"A bit of both," Kisuke admits. "The energy that formed this place is very old, and as of yet unexplained. It is, however, malleable. I chose the shop as my headquarters to further my research on the matter.”

He gives Ichigo a sunny smile as he fishes under his shirt, pulling out a long, silver chain with a dainty silver key on the end. Ichigo feels his heart stop as he takes in the familiar, overwhelming sense of otherness that oozes off the metal.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” Kisuke’s eyes are sharp, curious. “It appeared in my pocket the day I first stepped into this place. That was… near a century ago, now.” He slides the key absently along its chain. “Nearly a century of research, and I still have no idea how the key works. It’s a fun puzzle, though.”

“I bet.” Ichigo— Ichigo thought he was the only one. That he had the only one. It wasn’t— it wasn’t something he thought about often, or anything, but he’d recognized it as another one of his little oddities, best kept to himself.

And here comes Urahara, dangling an identical— albeit prettier— key of his own.

Ichigo’s too dazed to register the man opening the door until he does.

“Here we are,” he says, gesturing for Ichigo to look. He does, and—

The memories rush back as he takes in the room. It’s bigger than what his mother had, but somehow, it seems just as crowded, with shelves lining the walls and forming narrow aisles around the monstrous record player.

“I kept your mother’s organizational system,” Kisuke tells him when Ichigo doesn’t speak. “By genre, then alphabetical, then by year. Pain in the ass, but it gave me something to do for a week or so.”

“Mom liked it complicated.” Ichigo swallows. “Made it easy for her to tell if someone was messing with her stuff.”

“That sounds like her,” Kisuke says, smiling a little. “She was very particular, your mother.”

“Yeah.” Ichigo pulls one of the records, running his fingers over the cover before sliding the record out of its sleeve. The record player still works— a miracle, considering the dust— and a few seconds later, music fills the air.

Ichigo hasn’t listened to Rush since he was ten.

“It’ll take more than one trip to move it all,” he tells Kisuke thoughtfully. “But I have the time.”

Kisuke smiles.

“So do I.”

Chapter Text

In three hundred years, Ichigo never stops dreaming of the war. That’s what surprises Ichigo the most, honestly, the fact that sometimes he forgets how old the girls are but he can’t forget the exact look in Ulquiorra’s childishly big green eyes as he turned to dust in front of him. He can’t forget the sudden, searing pain as Byakuya, cool as a cucumber, aims a bolt of blue lightning at a human boy playing at superhero. He can’t forget the dread that turned his blood to ice when he found out Orihime was taken, the worst case scenarios that began flashing behind his eyes as they prepared for her rescue.

He can’t forget, and according to all personal and professional accounts on the subject of PTSD, he probably never will. Which is just… great. Exactly what a person who looks sixteen ought to be living with, out in the open, in a world that doesn’t know he spent a summer breaking into a veritable fortress of undead magical ninjas and helped capture a madman who claimed to be a god.

In the World of the Living, he’s not even legal to drive.

The nightmares have become just another aspect of his life, at this point, and sometimes, they’re almost bearable. Sometimes they’re not, and he wakes up with his hollow’s shriek ringing in his ears and a shot of adrenaline that leaves him with the need to do something, anything.

Instinct says stab something, so he fumbles blindly for a sword he knows will be there as he rolls out of bed, key already in hand.

The key dumps him in a wasteland, something out of a Resident Evil video game. There are zombies, or an approximation of zombies, which is great, because Ichigo really appreciates moving targets, especially the kind that wants him dead. There are easily a hundred of them, gnashing and gnawing and grabbing for him. He doesn’t let them touch him, because that’s stupid, but their blood spatters across his face and clothes, dyeing him a grisly red as he chops through half-rotten brains.

Always aim for the head, just in case.

Even though he’s human now, he’s still faster than most, and unlike Resident Evil zombies, these fuckers don’t run. He makes quick work of them, slicing through meat and bone until he’s the only one left standing, sun beating down on his face in the middle of the empty street. His breath comes in pants, his chest heaving as he stares up at the sky, feels the blood going sticky-dry on his skin.

He feels… better. Calmer. Balanced. Not so… scared.

A growl too close for comfort sounds somewhere behind him. He whirls, raising his weapon into the waiting hand of a young woman in a sundress with only half of one shoulder. Startled, he tries to step back, tripping over the bodies and falling onto his back.

Oh, shit, he’s going to die at the hands of a zombie, of all things— or at least he was, because not ten seconds after the thought crosses his mind there’s the sound of a high velocity stabby thing breaking through bone and fatty tissue, followed by the zombie collapsing, apparently dead thanks to… an arrow.

Ichigo shoves it off, pushing himself to his feet and grabbing for his sword. Suddenly, he doesn’t feel so calm. He feels sort of sick, actually. Like he might vomit— no, must vomit. There it goes.

Sighing to himself, he takes a deep breath and straightens again, wiping at his mouth with the cleanest part of his hand.

“Not often we see a reaction like that,” someone out of sight calls to him in English. “Not anymore.”

Ichigo huffs. Of course a zombie apocalypse would happen in America.

“I am out of practice with the dead,” he calls back in the same language. “This was a good reminder.”

A man steps out from behind a building, followed by another with a crossbow, which he has thoughtfully trailed on Ichigo. They look wary— probably because whatever universe the key has brought him to is some kind of apocalypse, honestly. Ichigo does his best not to take it personally, wiping his weapon across the back of his pant leg before sheathing it.

The first man stops ten feet away and crosses his arms.

“Not often we see such skilled strangers ‘round here,” he says. “Except for the end there, you were doin’ pretty good.”

Ichigo huffs a laugh.

“Thanks,” he says. “That shot was amazing,” he adds, nodding to the man with the crossbow. He doesn’t smile, but Ichigo doesn’t really care. He focuses on the other man instead.

“Where am I?”

The man blinks.

“Near DC,” he says. “Who are ya?”

“Ichigo.”

“Ichigo.” The man nods thoughtfully. “I’m Rick. You plannin’ on sticking around here?”

“Er…” Ichigo shrugs. “I don’t think so. Usually I just… pass through.”

This is true. Ichigo doesn’t remember spending more than a day or two in any universe that isn’t the Palace or his own.

Rick nods again, glancing at his partner before looking back to Ichigo.

“You look like you could use a shower and some fresh clothes,” he says. “Why don’t you come with us— we’ve got both of those things back home.”

“Oh, it’s alright,” Ichigo says. “I’ll be on my way.”

“It’s the least we could do,” Rick says. “You just saved Daryl and me the trouble of handlin’ the hoard on our own, after all. You demolished more’n’ half of ‘em.”

Clearly this man wants more from Ichigo than to thank him, but… Ichigo’s bored, and the thought of talking with a man from the zombie apocalypse sounds… fascinating.

“Alright,” he says. “May I have a moment to find my things? I hid my bag in there.” He points to one of the far buildings.

“Sure.”

Ichigo nods and turns on his heel, bolting for the building while he pulls the key from his throat.

The Palace is ready for him, the same way it always is, and there’s a travel bag propped up just inside the door with all the things that would be necessary for travel, along with a voice recorder tucked into the side pocket.

The Palace never fails him.

When he steps back out, he finds them waiting, murmuring to each other in quiet argument. It seems the crossbow man, Daryl, dislikes the idea of bringing Ichigo along.

“Got it,” he calls, jogging back to them. “Where are we going?”

Rick smiles.

“Civilization,” he says.

That must mean something here.

*.*

‘Civilization’ is actually a little town with high walls made of metal. Ichigo is led by Rick to what he assumes is the man’s home, given a towel and a fresh pair of jeans, and told not to come out until the stench of rotten blood is gone.

Ichigo obeys, mostly because he’s sticky and uncomfortable and also because, well, he saw a baby on their way to the bathroom.

He loves babies. Babies are the best.

When he comes back down, Rick is sitting with the baby, a woman with dreadlocks, a boy not much younger than Ichigo, and a pretty woman with an uncertain smile.

Rick speaks first.

“Hey, Ichigo,” he says. “You look a little better.”

Ichigo shrugs, scratching at a scar absently.

“I feel better,” he admits. “Though… I didn’t want to go rifling through your things, but I’d appreciate a shirt.”

“I’ll grab you something,” the woman with dreadlocks says, getting to her feet. “Be right back.”

The last words are directed at Rick, filled with all the wariness that ought to be afforded to a stranger in the apocalypse.

Ichigo supposes that’s fair.

He turns his attention to the other strangers.

“I suppose you already know, but I’m Ichigo,” he offers.

“Oh, right. This is Maggie, and this is my son, Carl.” Rick looks slightly embarrassed. “I was just tellin’ them about your one man war out there.”

Ichigo ducks his head sheepishly.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” he says. “I was just… letting off some steam.”

Rick snorts.

“If that’s your idea of letting off steam I’d hate to see you when you’re serious,” he says. “What you did back there… that merits dinner, at least.”

“I… thanks, I guess, but you don’t have to.” Ichigo pats his stomach. “I eat pretty well, if you can’t tell.”

“Yeah, well, me’n’ Daryl were wonderin’ about that,” Rick says. “You from another town nearby, or somethin’?”

“Oh, no— I’m not from this world. Just visiting.” Ichigo smiles crookedly. “Zombies are interesting, though. How’d that happen?”

Rick blinks.

“Uh… no one’s really sure,” he says slowly, frowning. “We think maybe something government, but nobody’s been able to confirm.”

“You been travelin’ alone, Ichigo?” Maggie asks, stepping in when it’s clear that Rick doesn’t know what to say.

“Oh, yeah. Always have.” Ichigo looks back to the baby. “What’s her name? She’s very cute.”

Rick chuckles. “Uh, this is my daughter, Judith.”

Ichigo grins.

“That’s awesome,” he says. “I love babies. My little sisters were the sweetest things— Karin was a little colicky, but when she was comfortable, she was so happy just to be held… can I touch her?”

“... Sure, I guess.”

Ichigo grins, circling the coffee table and crouching in front of Rick to offer Judith a finger to shake.

“Hi, baby,” he greets. “You’re very sweet. I bet it’s really hard to be a baby in a zombie universe, huh? Lots of uninvited guests.”

“Is that what you call ‘em?” Carl asks, brow furrowing. “‘Uninvited guests’?”

“Is that wrong?” Ichigo pets Judith’s cheek gently. She’s soft, just like he remembers his sisters being when they were this little. “Sorry. Like I said, this isn’t my world.”

“Technically, no,” Rick admits before Carl can answer. “But it’s a little… we call them walkers.”

“A practical name for the walking dead.” Ichigo looks up. “Did you build this town when the zom— when the walkers started becoming a problem?”

“It’s a long story,” Rick says. “Hey, you wanna have a look around? You’re an... invited guest, after all.”

Ichigo grins.

“That would be nice,” he says, straightening. “I wouldn’t mind a long story— that’s what makes these kinds of trips fun, after all.”

Rick doesn’t seem to know how to answer that, but luckily for him, Michonne’s returned, bearing a shirt and two katanas.

“You left yours in the bathroom,” she says, tossing Ichigo the shirt and the sword. “Maggie’ll show you around, if you want. Rick and I need to have a talk.”

“Oh. Okay.” Ichigo looks at Maggie and offers an arm. “Lead on, madame.”

She seems a little put-off by his lackadaisical attitude, but she tries a smile anyway and takes his arm.

“I’ll bring him back for dinner,” she says. “Fair.”

“That’s just fine, Maggie.” Rick smiles at her. “Don’t go scarin’ him off, alright? Not right away, at least.”

“Well, that’s foreboding,” Ichigo says. “I like this place.”

“There’s a lot to like,” Maggie says. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

Chapter Text

Ichigo has always handled populated universes the same way, which is to be honest. When he was younger, it was because he didn’t know how to even begin to go about attempting to fit in. When he got slightly older, he found that being thought crazy and/or magical (depending on the sort of world he’s in) works to his advantage, inasmuch that he can be absolutely honest about himself.

“So if you can cross between worlds, why on earth did you choose a place like this?” Maggie asks while they walk.

“I didn’t,” Ichigo admits. “Not consciously, anyway. I was having nightmares and when I woke up I needed to work all the energy off. The door I opened led me here, where there are a bunch of moving targets that I wouldn’t feel bad about taking down.”

“Must be some pretty bad nightmares, if they make you want to kill something,” she remarks politely.

He nods.

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Lots of blood. I was in a war, you know, when I was fifteen. Lost all my crazy superpowers trying to stop a man that was trying to turn himself into a god. Crazy, huh?”

This is a world quite close to his own. They think he’s crazy when he tells them his world doesn’t have zombies, and when he attributes his swordsmanship to a spirit war, he gets funny looks that border on insulting.

Ichigo doesn’t care. He highly doubts shinigami are hanging around this world for him to worry about keeping secrets, otherwise they would do something about the zombies. Probably.

The people of this world— or at least of the town Alexandria— are friendly enough. Maggie and a soft-spoken man wearing a preacher’s collar— Father Gabriel, Ichigo thinks— ask him about his world in the same polite way one might ask a distant relative about their children, and in return, he asks about their world, recorder switched on in his pocket.

The answers he get range from depressing to frustratingly undetailed. No one, it seems, knows exactly how the apocalypse started, and all of them have suffered dearly for it. Ichigo tries to make up for dredging up bad memories, and gives them stories about Renji’s terrible fashion sense and Rukia’s frankly horrific attempts at art, and even succeeds at getting a few laughs out of Maggie.

Maggie, he discovers, is married to a friendly man who takes Ichigo’s apparent strangeness in stride. It’s clear they’re in love, and Ichigo finds himself cheered by it. After so long being alone, it’s really the little things, and the way Glenn can’t stop staring at Maggie like she hung the moon herself is one of those little things. It makes him oddly hopeful— after all, these people have lived through the end of civilization as they knew it, and yet, without zombies? They never would have met. They never would have found this love.

It’s just nice, is all.

Daryl watches from a distance the entire time Ichigo’s outside with Maggie and whoever she decides to introduce him to. He’s a careful guy, that Daryl, wary of Ichigo and the potential chaos he might bring to Alexandria. Ichigo can understand that, of course, and he wishes he could ease Daryl’s mind, but it’s hard to explain to a population in a ‘realistic’ world that he won’t be around for very long, that he’s just an observer of their reality.

Besides Daryl, though, and maybe Carl, who seems just as unnerved by his presence as Daryl is, everybody seems quite open, and time flies by so quickly that it’s dinnertime before Ichigo can even notice.

The camaraderie among these people is something Ichigo envies. They’re happy to be alive, to be with each other, even though it’s clear they’ve all suffered in the face of an inevitable end. When Rick turns to him and offers him a bed that evening— in his own home— Ichigo decides he can’t just leave without offering something in return. Not after listening to the quiet whispers of food shortages and guns and toothpaste.

When Ichigo bids them a quiet good night, he goes straight to that guest room and opens the door to the Palace.

“Okay, so I need lots of nonperishable food,” he says as he walks in. “They need that. Maybe diapers, for the baby, and baby food, too. Um… cookies. Oreos. Fudge Stripes. Pocky. Seeds for things. Raspberries, maybe? Blackberries, blueberries, apple trees. Can I get a portable freezer with ice cream? All sorts of flavors, ideally, but— I think chocolate. Actually, chocolate too. And Mike and Ike’s. Some frozen chicken and steak? Some toothpaste for everybody, and shampoo and conditioner and stuff. Soap. Oh! And guns, lots of guns. And ammo.” As he speaks, he makes his way up the steps towards his room, only to find his way blocked by stacks of crates, already settled on helpful carts for easy movement.

“Perfect.” Ichigo takes the key and thinks of the guest room they’d given him for the night. The door proves wide enough for his gifts, so he wheels everything in and finds a scrap of paper and a pen.

Alexandria is a good place to end up, he writes. Maybe I’ll visit again sometime to see how you fare. Until then, I think you may need some things. Ichigo.

Signing off with a final flourish, he folds the note in half and settles it on top of the freezer so it can be seen. Then he returns to the Palace.

He sleeps well that night.

*.*

Ichigo wonders absently during recess if the worlds he can visit are real or not, if they exist under the key’s power only for Ichigo to visit or if they’re truly other worlds. He’s never really thought about it before, but it raises questions that he isn’t sure he’s quite able to tackle.

One thought does make him smile, though, in a spiteful sort of way, and that is the fact that Aizen worked at becoming a god for at least a century, and Ichigo, just by dint of being incredibly lucky, has a power that, depending on the way it works, makes him essentially just that; a god.

In your face, you cunning bastard.

Chapter Text

All of his mother’s records are piled up in an empty room in the Palace, ready and waiting to be played. Ichigo doesn’t feel right about it, though. He feels like… he feels like he shouldn’t keep them here. The Palace is a place where he goes to forget about Home. He shouldn’t be cluttering it with relics of days long since passed.

So, he does the smart thing and gets an apartment. Not a big one, but one that he can pay for up front in cash to crash in when he needs to make time pass. He can shower, though he doesn’t exactly trust that bathtub, he has a fridge, and based on the smell that sticks to the wallpaper in the hallways, nobody will notice or care if he smokes. It’s perfect for what he needs it for.

He furnishes the apartment with items from the Palace, including an oversized, vintage-looking record player, and spends the first night listening to Pink Floyd’s The Wall , just because he can.

“What shall we use,” Ichigo mumbles along with Roger Waters, watching the smoke swirl away from the end of his cigarette. “To fill the empty spaces…”

The album is pretty depressing, actually. Maybe he should turn it off.

*.*

Kisuke calls him to ask him if he’s free for dinner. He accepts, because he has nothing better to do.

“Hey, Urahara-san?”

“Yes, Ichigo.”

“Have you ever thought about the apocalypse?”

Kisuke blinks.

“Well,” he says after a moment. “Considering that we came rather close to one, I have to say yes, I have. Why do you ask?”

Ichigo fiddles with his chopsticks absently.

“I was just thinking,” he says. “About zombies, you know?”

“Not really, no.” Kisuke leans forward. “What about zombies?”

He shrugs.

“Just— do you think that’s a possibility? A zombie apocalypse?”

Kisuke thinks about it.

“I believe it would be very difficult for humanity to manufacture a virus as complex as would be needed to have viable zombies,” he says. “Or, at least, long-lasting ones. If you’re taking your cues from Night of the Living Dead or something similar, the virus would have to be… intelligent, I suppose is the word for it. Turning your host into a rotting corpse doesn’t seem like the best way to go about survival. At the same time, there are plenty of examples in nature of creatures whose sole purpose is to reproduce. A fly, for instance, hardly lives beyond a few days. So… it’s up for grabs.”

Ichigo hums.

“Would shinigami be able to do something like that?”

Kisuke’s lips pinch.

“If the Soul King were to be destroyed,” he says. “There is the potential that the borders between the World of the Living and the Worlds of the Dead— Soul Society, Hueco Mundo, Hell, and the others— would be destroyed. If there was no place left for the souls to go, there might be the potential of… unlife. A body can still function so long as the hindbrain is active to regulate necessary bodily functions, and a heart will continue beating so long as a soul resides within it. Whether that soul would still have control after their chain has been severed, however… I am unsure. But theoretically, it is possible.”

“So, if we hadn’t stopped Aizen, the World of the Living could have been thrown into a zombie apocalypse and no one would have known why.”

“Like I said, it’s theoretical.”

“Huh.” Ichigo sits back. “I guess eventually, people would hollowfy anyway, right?”

“Most likely.”

“So then you’d have a hollowfied soul in a human body, with all the instincts of a new, starving, angry hollow, along with the human instincts that allow us to walk and pick things up and open our mouths and chew.” What if that’s what happened in Rick’s world? What if their shinigami failed in protecting their Soul King? “That’s really grim.”

“It is.” Kisuke smiles slightly. “Why are we talking about this?”

“Ah, no reason. Just thinking.”

“Well, if you’re interested, Jinta’s just started some American comic series. It’s all about a zombie apocalypse, following an ex-sheriff and a few others through the new world order.”

An… an ex-sheriff?

“What’s it called?” Ichigo asks, an odd, cold feeling trickling down his spine.

“Er… Walking Dead.” Kisuke reaches out for the side table, snagging what had initially looked like a magazine from the stack of glossy books from the top. “Here. He’s been leaving them all over the house.”

Ichigo takes the book and flips it open and— that looks an awful lot like Michonne, doesn’t it?

“Do you think he’d mind if I borrowed a few of these?” Ichigo asks, looking up from the comic.

Kisuke shrugs.

“Please do. Then he’ll have somebody to talk to about the damn things,” he says. “He gets quite frustrated when he catches on that I’m not listening, you know. I think that’s the first issue.”

Ichigo nods and slides the book into his bag, nerveless hands clumsy on the clasp.

Looks like the key isn’t making universes, then. But if that’s the case, who is?

*.*

There are some marked differences between the book series and the world he’d visited, ones that are obvious even with only one day’s observation. For one, in the books, Daryl doesn’t exist— or maybe he’s just introduced later, Ichigo hasn’t finished the series yet— and for another, Carol’s dead, not wandering around Alexandria with hard eyes and a false, homemaker’s smile at the ready.

That’s… unnerving.

He wonders if this is a normal occurrence, or if it’s just a one-off. Are there other books that have real universes a click of a lock away? What about television? Movies?

Is Harry Potter real?

The thought is too much. Ichigo can’t deal with it right now, so he doesn’t. Instead, he takes the day off from school and stays inside his new apartment. Tomorrow, he thinks. Tomorrow he’ll try to figure out what’s going on.

Today, though, well, he’s going to smoke a shitload of weed and listen to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

*.*

Eventually, he has to go back to the Palace, regardless of his apprehension. It’s the closest thing he has to home, after all, and the only place that will give him the answers he wants.

The Palace never fails him.

He takes his time getting to the library, first going for a walk along the shoreline, then stopping for lunch, then taking a nap, then going through the gallery, then stopping for dinner. It takes him a full three days to finally climb the steps to the library, but he manages it, he does.

There’s a stack of books waiting for him, just like they were before. Settling carefully into his favorite armchair, he takes the one from the top of the stack.

The Hidden Reality, by Brian Greene.

Sighing to himself, he cracks open the cover and gets to work.

Chapter Text

Multiverse Theory and Parallel Universes, oh my. Ichigo’s head is spinning with new information that kind of makes sense? Like, Ichigo knows it makes sense, but there’s too much of it for him to fit into his tiny human brain at once.

So he doesn’t worry about it. He goes and takes a nap, instead, then goes swimming in the crystalline blue sea that sometimes has fish and sometimes doesn’t. Today, the Palace pulls out all the stops. There’s a full coral reef, complete with all the colorful little creatures that come with such a habitat.

There’s no need for goggles in this sea, no oxygen tanks or snorkels or skin tight suits that ride up your crack. Under this water, Ichigo can breathe just fine.

A whitetip reef shark swims up to him and taps him lightly on the nose with its snout. Ichigo reaches out to pet its head with a finger.

He needs some time to let the world realign itself, he thinks later as he slogs his way back up to the Palace. While he’s been lucky enough to live an interesting life full of casually visiting (or invading) other worlds, knowing there are other worlds and understanding why they might be there are two completely different things. Knowing that anything that Ichigo or anyone else can think of likely already exists in another universe is damn frightening, and Ichigo doesn’t want to think about that right now.

So, he goes and does the normal thing for a while. He goes to school, he goes to work, he sleeps at the clinic sometimes and sleeps at the apartment more. He goes to clubs on the weekends and sells good pot for better prices, and occasionally brings a person home.

He learns lots of stuff over the course of the next three months, about people and about sex. With girls it’s easier, in a way, particularly after a nice older lady by the name of Chiyoko decides to give him a weekend’s worth of lessons about women’s orgasms— specifically how to make them happen.

(She checks on his progress every now and again, which Ichigo appreciates. Chiyoko is a lovely woman, even if he is pretty sure she could kill him in a fair fight.)

Guys are a little harder. There’s a lot of prep work— you can’t eat before, there’s enemas, then stretching and lube and cleanup… It’s a lot of work, but the payoff is—

Ichigo’s pretty sure he prefers men.

After a while, he realizes he has types. For girls, they’re usually small and dark-haired and bossy— not particularly surprising. For guys, well… He likes them a little bit taller than him, preferably blond, with smart mouths and easy smiles with just a hint of steel underneath.

This is also not surprising, considering Ichigo’s old crush. What can he say? Rose was hot, he was single (Probably. Ichigo’s not so sure about what was going on between him and Love), he liked all the same music Ichigo liked, and, well, Ichigo was youngish (somewhere in his first century, still).

Sex is a good way to pass the time, between school and work. He never sleeps at Home anymore, after all— if he were, he wouldn’t be able to sleep as long as he liked, wouldn’t be able to lounge in bed with a book until he was well and truly awake before padding to the kitchen for a leisurely breakfast before a long bath. So he stays up all night, making new friends in the afterglow.

This one guy, Takeshi? He introduces Ichigo to acid . Sex on acid? It’s super weird. Like, Ichigo can’t even describe it weird.

Takeshi becomes one of his regular hook ups after that.

There’s a girl, Hana, who becomes something of a friend. They play his mother’s records that first night she comes, and she gives him ecstasy. They don’t have sex, usually, when she comes over, but they tend to wake up naked anyway, because ecstasy makes you touchy, even if it doesn’t always make you horny, and there’s something arguably more sensual about just feeling another person’s skin.

And then, it’s his birthday again. He’s turning… eighteen? Nineteen? No, nineteen. He graduated high school that year. His family’s pretty pissed at him for not going to college, but who needs college when you’ve literally got a key to the universe? Certainly not Ichigo.

His sisters call to wish him a happy birthday and Unagiya gives him the next two days off, so Ichigo does the sensible thing and goes to a club, ready and willing to feel as good as he possibly can.

That’s when he runs into Urahara.

*.*

Kisuke is vaguely aware of everything Ichigo has ever done. He knows his first kiss (Tatsuki, isn’t that sweet?), he knows his first crush (Chado, though he got over that one pretty quickly), he knows his feelings about chocolate and his preference for brightly colored shirts. Now, though— since the end of the war, though it could be argued that Kisuke’s interest was peaked sooner than that— Kisuke has learned, through trial and error, that Ichigo hides far more than the heart on his sleeve would suggest.

The problem is, Kisuke doesn’t know what.

So he follows him.

Ichigo doesn’t live at the clinic, really. He still has a room, of course, but it’s dusty, unlived in. None of his family seem to have noticed his absence, save for of course Yuzu, but she’s yet to comment on the subject, busy running interference with her father and sisters.

No, Ichigo doesn’t live at the clinic anymore. Instead, he lives in a rundown little apartment that smells like marijuana and and old plastic.

Ichigo isn’t embarrassed, precisely, at being caught by Kisuke at the bar, missing most of a shit and covered in body glitter, but it’s clear that his presence was unwelcome. It’s right around Ichigo’s birthday, after all, and he’s old enough to have a few friends that he might not want his family knowing about.

“How long have you been here?” Kisuke inquires when he takes a seat on the wide, squashy couch.

“You mean the apartment?” Ichigo shrugs. “A couple of months.”

Kisuke nods. It’s been longer than that, he’s sure— dust doesn’t just pile like that without time, after all— but he doesn’t say it, intent on Ichigo himself. The boy— man, now, young man— is leaning against the record player, as far away from Kisuke as he can manage without being in the room. His shirt— which was clearly a woman’s at some point— is too short and too tight, squeezing around his shoulders and riding high on his chest. It doesn’t pretend to try and cover his stomach at all.

Kisuke’s had a few drinks this evening. Kisuke is staring.

“I like it,” he says, because he can’t think of anything else to say.

“Thanks.” Ichigo eyes him for a moment, then turns to the record player. “Are you still working on getting me back my superpowers?”

“Hm? Yes,” Kisuke says, nodding. “There’s a date and everything, actually.”

“A date?” Ichigo glances at him from over his shoulder. “This isn’t going to be some big thing, is it?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Kisuke asks. “The amount of work that’s gone into this— plus, you know, you’re the first substitute shinigami in some seven hundred years to be considered for entry into the Gotei.”

“Wait, what?”

“Not immediately,” Kisuke says, flapping a hand. “When you die. Properly. For the last time. I can’t think.”

“What were you drinking?” Ichigo says, tilting his head.

Something that tasted of oranges.

“Vodka,” he says. There must have been vodka in it. Nothing else makes his head spin like this.

“Yeah, I thought you might’ve been.” There is a sudden bubble of music— Tchaikovsky, if Kisuke knows his ballets.

“Swan Lake?” he asks as Ichigo finally takes the seat on the other side of the couch and lights a cigarette.

Ichigo smiles.

“I like Swan Lake,” he says. “Musically, anyway. I can’t say I care much for the plot.”

“It’s not much of a happy ending,” Kisuke agrees, tilting his head back. “But it is beautiful.”

“Tragedies are very rarely beautiful,” Ichigo says. “Tchaikovsky just did a good job making it seem like it was.”

“You have a lot of feelings about Swan Lake.”

“I have a lot of feelings about a lot of things,” Ichigo says dryly. “I am Human, Kisuke.”

“Barely.” Kisuke probably shouldn’t have said that. That opens up a can of worms that Kisuke would rather not deal with. Closing his eyes, he braces himself for a demand for clarification. Ichigo has a very unique, very forceful way of demanding things.

To his surprise, nothing ever comes.

“Yeah,” Ichigo agrees instead. “Barely’s about right.”

Ichigo knows something more, Kisuke thinks, though he can’t imagine how. Isshin likes to hoard secrets-that-shouldn’t-be-secrets, and Ichigo’s heritage— his full heritage— is one of them.

Maybe he’s being metaphorical.

“So they’ve got a date set,” Ichigo says thoughtfully, making Kisuke’s head spin. “When is it? Should I dress for the occasion?”

Kisuke shifts, drawing one leg up under him.

“Three days from now,” he says. “They’ll come and they’ll watch you, and they’ll wait until you’re alone to approach you. Be warned— they might just give you a sword in the gut.”

Ichigo snorts.

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

And— yeah, he’s right. It wouldn’t.

Kisuke is still staring. He hasn’t stopped, really, not since he set eyes on Ichigo in that dark, basement club. He’s never seen Ichigo smile so much, so openly pleased and— just open, really. It’s probably for the best he was such a grouchy kid when he was sixteen. He’s far too handsome when he smiles. He seems so much happier, now, so unwilling to let Kisuke’s clearly unwelcome presence ruin his night. What’s changed? What’s made him decide to let go of the fact that Kisuke clearly was at that club for a reason, and—

“I got older, Urahara-san,” Ichigo says, and—

“Did I say that all out loud?”

Ichigo nods, smiling a little.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Ichigo tilts his head. “As for why I don’t mind your stalking… that’s just you, Urahara-san. You’re that sort-of creep that keeps tabs on everybody. I’ve gotten used to it.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Your language is deteriorating,” Ichigo says. “How much did you drink?”

“Not a whole lot,” Kisuke says. “I think I’m just a little…” No, Kisuke, don’t say that.

“A little what?” Ichigo leans forward. “A little cockstruck? Because you certainly seem that way to me, Urahara-san.”

“Am I?” He might be. He’s thinking all sorts of odd thoughts today.

Ichigo’s smile is so fucking pretty.

“Yeah, you are,” Ichigo says. “Lucky for you, you’re cute, and I cleaned up today, so you can fuck me if you want. Would you like that?”

Ichigo is very, very close, so close that Kisuke can put his hands on him, pushing up that crop top— because that’s what it fucking is, is a crop top— with his hands to exposed bare skin and—

“You have tattoos.”

“Yeah.” Ichigo rubs at the little crown above his nipple. “I got bored. Probably gonna regret in a few decades.”

“Most definitely,” Kisuke agrees. “Kurosaki-san, is this okay?”

“Probably not,” Ichigo says. “I have a lot of problems, and I’m still kind of pissed about the fact that you just decided not to talk to me for no good reason. But you’re here, and you’re warm, and you’re handsome enough, so I guess we may as well do this now and worry about consequences in the morning— preferably after breakfast.”

“That seems fair, Kurosaki-san,” Kisuke says.

“I think you should call me Ichigo,” Ichigo says. “Because I sure as hell am gonna be calling you Kisuke.”

“Okay—”

Ichigo kisses him and, well, that’s Kisuke’s night settled, really.

Chapter Text

Kisuke wakes up warm and alone, curled up under a leopard-patterned comforter ( what the fuck, Ichigo? ) with his face pressed into a hot pink pillow that smells like blueberry shampoo and sweat. There is no moment of realization, no whisper of shame or guilt or terror, just the solid, plain fact: he fucked Kurosaki Ichigo, and damn, was it good.

The smell of waffles wafts into the room. Right, breakfast. Ichigo didn’t want any talk of mistakes until after they’d both eaten, Kisuke remembers this, vaguely.

He finds his pants are torn in two when he decides to go looking for them, so he settles on his briefs and a silky, floral robe he spots hanging over the edge of the bed.

Ichigo is dressed only in the jeans from last night when he finally pads into the kitchen, mixing bowl balanced on his hip as he ladles batter into the waffle maker.

“Morning, Kisuke,” he says, smiling at him over his shoulder. “C’mon— there’s plates in the cupboard over the sink.”

Nodding, Kisuke moves to set the table. None of the plates match, but the designs are fun— one square checkered, one shaped like a sunflower. The forks he grabs from the dish rack, noting almost absently that they all appear to be made of real silver.

Ichigo flops two waffles onto the sunflower plate in front of Kisuke.

“I tend to eat Western, nowadays,” he says, taking the seat opposite before spearing two more waffles and dropping them onto his own plate. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Kisuke says, reaching for one of the jam jars Ichigo already has laid out. “I like Western food.”

Ichigo smiles at him.

“It’s sweet, and it’s heavy,” he says. “I’m always hungry, nowadays— American portions are the only thing that do it for me.”

“Now, Ichigo, that’s rude,” Kisuke says. “What if an American hears you?”

The teen chuckles.

“I don’t think Americans would be offended,” he says, reaching for the whipper cream can. “After all, don’t they call their country ‘the land of plenty?’”

Kisuke shakes his head, glancing at the jar. It’s homemade, with a small sticker reading ‘mango’ in neat print.

“You make your own jam?”

“I’ve got a lot of free time,” Ichigo says, shrugging. “Especially now that school’s over.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Kisuke agrees. “Rumor has it you’re not going to university?”

“That’s true.”

“So what are you planning to do?”

Ichigo shrugs, spooning raspberry jam onto his waffle.

“Travel,” he says. “Relax. Enjoy myself for a little bit. I’ve got all the time in the world to go to school, if I want to go later— besides, I learn better on my own.”

“Based on your skill in linguistics, I find it hard to disagree,” Kisuke says, smiling slightly. “How many languages is it you speak?”

“... Some fifteen, I think?” Ichigo says after a moment. “I can read a few ancient languages, but speaking’s a bit iffy, considering.”

“A polyglot in the making,” Kisuke says.

“Is that the word for it?” Ichigo shrugs. “I was bored, is all. There’s no real point to learning— just personal interest, you know?”

“There’s something to be said for personal interest,” Kisuke says. “Half of the Gotei’s technological advances are thanks to the changes made in the twelfth by yours truly.”

“So modest,” Ichigo says wryly.

Kisuke offers him a mocking bow, twirling his hand for effect.

“Life is hard for men as humble as I,” he says, and Ichigo laughs. He laughs a lot, it seems.

“I suppose it must be,” Ichigo says. “So, three days ‘til shinigami?”

Kisuke sombers.

“Two days, now,” he says. “But yes.”

“And they’ll be watching me for the day,” Ichigo muses, popping a piece of waffle into his mouth. “... I’ll admit, I’m torn between fucking with them and… yeah.”

“The urge is strong,” Kisuke agrees. “But you must do your very best to stomp on that feeling. On the whole, shinigami don’t appreciate a sense of humor.”

Ichigo sighs in mock disappointment.

“No orgies, then?”

“Preferably no— unless, of course, you want to deal with Kyouraku-taicho’s offer to join in.”

“Of course he’s invited,” Ichigo says. “He’s quite handsome, you know.”

Kisuke arches an eyebrow.

“You have changed,” he says.

“‘He who loves, flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free and nothing holds him back,’” Ichigo says. “My problem has always been loving too much, Kisuke. That’s why I kick ass.”

“And there’s the teenager,” Kisuke says wryly. “You had me worried for a second.”

Ichigo smiles. It’s not a particularly happy smile, this time.

“I’m far from a teenager, Kisuke,” he says, and the words hold a weight that is uncomfortably familiar. “But it’s nice of you to say, I suppose.”

Kisuke looks down at his breakfast.

“What we put you through— what I put you through— was more than any child ought to live through,” he says to his waffles. “And you were a child, Ichigo, no matter how mature you seemed.”

There’s a long pause. Kisuke’s almost afraid to look up.

“I thought I said we’d wait until after breakfast to discuss bad decisions.”

Kisuke looks up. Ichigo’s just looking at him, expression soft. There’s a smear of cream in the corner of his mouth, and his hair hangs damp and flat from a shower that Kisuke must have missed.

“You’re right, of course,” Ichigo says. “I was a child. I was too young. But I was your best bet too, I think— I must have been. I mean, besides being a genetic mutant, I could have turned out completely uncontrollable. I could have switched sides. I could have decided to mind my own business and let you all die. If you had a better option than an emotionally repressed fifteen-year-old with mommy issues, you would have gone with it.” Ichigo leans back, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. “At the same time, if you did have a better option, you wouldn’t have met me, and then you wouldn’t have had Rush playing in the background after a late night of truly fantastic sex.”

Kisuke can’t help it— he laughs.

“It was pretty good,” he admits. “Though I’m having some mixed feelings on the subjects.”

Ichigo flaps a hand.

“Don’t worry about my age or my father,” Ichigo says. “In two days, I’ll be able to kick his ass into another dimension if he tries anything, so just try and keep it to yourself ‘til then, okay?”

Kisuke winces. He actually hadn’t thought about Isshin until that moment, a touch too preoccupied with things like ‘teenager’ and ‘alive’ and ‘technically the product of a poorly-handled experiment’.

“... He’s going to put my head on a pike,” he says.

“Not if he doesn’t find out,” Ichigo says. “Isshin might be more observant than he lets on, but I’m far better at keeping secrets than even you know, Kisuke.”

“I think I’m starting to figure that out.”

Ichigo’s smile widens.

“I don’t doubt that,” he says. “But I think I ought to warn you— you’re nowhere near knowing everything there is to know about me, Kisuke.”

Something about that statement— besides the fact that it’s irrevocably true— makes Kisuke go warm all over. He has the sudden, overpowering urge to kiss the man across the table, and why wouldn’t he? Ichigo said it himself— Kisuke doesn’t know everything about him. Hell, considering last night, Kisuke hazards a guess that he’s closer to knowing nothing at all.

The very concept of a secret has always done odd things to Kisuke. Maybe that’s Yoruichi’s doing— she’s always had a way of adding sex to their combined passion for ferreting out the things no one wanted them knowing— but either way, he’s stuck with these feelings now, and judging by Ichigo’s smug expression, he knows exactly the thoughts that are going through Kisuke’s head.

“You’re so weird, Kisuke,” Ichigo says, pushing himself out of his chair and circling the table. “C’mere.”

Ichigo wraps an arm around Kisuke’s shoulders, leaning down slightly so he can press a kiss to his mouth. Kisuke accepts it without question, leaning back to give him a better angle. Nervousness slides down his spine in cold, sharp pricks, making him shiver. Ichigo is warm, and heavy, and sort of maybe has pieces of waffle stuck in his teeth.

Cute.

“I hope you’re not planning on doing anything today,” Ichigo says, pulling back. “Because I’ll be honest, Kisuke— I’m not letting you go anywhere.”

“Oh, good,” Kisuke says, a little dazed. “Because I don’t think I planned on going very far in this state.”

“Perfect,” Ichigo says. “Let’s call it a day. The doors are locked, the radio’s on, and I may or may not have a couple of weed cookies waiting for us in my room.”

“Never had a weed cookie.”

“Never? You’ll love it. They’re great for post-coital snacks.”

Kisuke grins, lifting Ichigo up into his arms just because he can and starting for the bedroom.

“I think this could turn out to be a very interesting partnership,” he says as Ichigo kisses him again.

“‘Course it will,” Ichigo says. “I’m hot, you’re hot, and I’ve got rope under my bed.”

Kisuke feels his face go hot.

Ichigo’s going to be the death of him.

Chapter Text

“Did he smoke before? I don’t remember him smoking.”

Rukia elbows Renji in the side.

“Quiet,” she hisses. “I’m trying to pay attention?”

“To what?” Renji demands. “All he’s done is read and smoke and pick up the phone.”

“He’s not speaking Japanese,” Byakuya remarks idly. “That book’s not in Japanese, either.”

“Really?”

Byakuya doesn’t look at his fukutaicho.

“Hirako-taicho went to have a look earlier,” he says. “The book is in French.”

“French?” Rukia didn’t know Ichigo could read French. “Is he speaking French?”

Byakuya shakes his head.

“German,” he says. “I was unaware he was multilingual.”

Rukia wasn’t aware of it, either. He always seemed rather uninterested in learning, honestly. Unless it involved fighting.

“He’s classed it up quite a bit since I saw him last, too,” Shinji adds from Byakuya’s other side. “That suit’s tailored, I’d bet my last paycheck on it.”

“Hasn’t lost his preference for bright colors, either,” Rose says. “Only he would think maroon is an acceptable color for daywear. And that vest… I don’t know how it even works, but it does.”

“Kurosaki-san has changed, in the last few years,” Urahara says, not looking up from what appears to be a Rubik’s cube. “Humans tend to do that, lest they grow stagnant.”

“So long as his training hasn’t gone to the wayside, I don’t give a flying fuck,” Zaraki grunts. “I miss my old sparring partner.”

“Just so long as you promise not to jump him the moment he can see us again,” Kyoraku says. “I’m sure he’ll need a minute or two to readjust.”

Ichigo shifts, drawing their attention once more. He checks his watch, then shuts his book and tucks it into the messenger bag by his feet. Pushing himself to his feet, he settles the strap of his bag over one shoulder and starts walking, unaware of the small entourage that followed him with soft, silent steps.

“The moment he’s alone, we’ll need to take action,” Isshin says. “For all that my son has antisocial tendencies, that boy’s never really alone for long.”

Rukia thinks Urahara’s gritting his teeth, but she can’t tell— the lines of his face smooth out after only a moment’s stiffness.

“He’s going back to his apartment,” Kisuke says, steps quickening. “He lives alone, so it’s probably our best chance.”

“His apartment?” Shinji glances at Isshin. “I thought you said he still lived at home.”

“He does,” Isshin says, frowning at Kisuke.

Urahara clicks his tongue.

“Haven’t you noticed, Isshin-san?” he asks amiably. “Your son’s had his own place for… oh, half a year, at least.”

Isshin hadn’t noticed, that much is clear by the annoyance that flashes across his face.

“Impossible,” he says. “He’s working minimum wage jobs— that’s all he can manage, since he’s not in school. He wouldn’t be able to afford an apartment on that alone.”

Urahara shrugs.

“Be that as it may, he has a place of his own,” he says. “Perhaps the landlord owes him a favor. That seems quite common, given Kurosaki-san’s generous nature— ah, there’s his building.”

Rukia frowns and slips closer, landing near Kisuke’s elbow.

“Urahara-san, how did you know Ichigo has an apartment?” she asks quietly. “Have you been watching him?”

Urahara’s lip quirks.

“I have been,” he admits. “But that isn’t how I know. Kurosaki-san is quite a secretive bastard, all in all. No, he invited me over after running into him at a market.”

That seems… unlikely.

“Were you trying to run into him?”

Kisuke’s smile widens.

“Now, Kuchiki-fukutaicho, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?”

Well, that’s a definite ‘yes’.

Kisuke leaps from the rooftop to land neatly on the sill of an open window. Turning back, he gestures for the group to follow him, disappearing into the apartment without another look.

“Guess that’s it,” Shinji says.

“Hope it’s big enough to fit us all,” Rose says, frowning slightly as he moves to follow.

“I doubt it,” Isshin says.

*.*

Ichigo’s apartment is small, but it’s clean and it’s comfortable and it’s clearly taken care of. Ichigo himself— once he steps inside— makes a point of clearing out the fridge before putting on the kettle for tea.

They all watch him intently as he makes his way to the shelf of records on the opposite wall, humming absently to himself as he plucks a battered album from the neat rows and peers at the cover.

“Judas Priest? Good enough,” he murmurs, sliding the vinyl from its sleeve and setting it on the record player. He sets the needle on the edge, and a moment later, something that sounds vaguely like guitars and drums comes screaming out of the surround sound system, making all of them jump, save for Ichigo.

Still, he turns it down, eyeing the couch thoughtfully before going back into the kitchen and returning with one of the breakfast chairs and an ashtray.

He sets the ashtray on the speaker beside the record player and sets the chair down in the doorway. Then, he takes off his jacket, hangs it in the closet, and takes a seat, leaning back and stretching his arms high above his head.

“Now’s as good a chance as any,” Urahara mutters to Rukia, who nods and draws the sword— not her zanpakuto, not like last time, but the weapon made specifically for the purpose of imbuing Kurosaki Ichigo with power once more.

Better to do it quick, she thinks, moving to stand in front of her best friend. It’ll hurt, most definitely, but then, Ichigo’s used to pain.

It’s odd that he doesn’t notice her, odd that he doesn’t flinch away from the point of the sword when she presses it directly above his heart or curse at her for doing something that so obviously should kill him.

She pushes hard. Ichigo jerks, but doesn’t try to get out of the way, hands instinctively grabbing for the blade now embedded in his chest as his oppressive reiatsu reforms and fills the little apartment.

Cinnamon eyes blink up at her almost expectantly as blood colors his mouth red. His hands are pressed tight to the sword, bleeding from the force he exerts on the sharp edge.

“Rukia?” he says. “Well, fuck.”

He glances behind her at the rest of the group, eyes flitting from person to person before nodding to himself and getting to his feet. Almost careless, he pulls the sword from his chest and tosses it aside. There’s a tear in his shirt, but otherwise, there’s no hint of injury, his body healing itself as near-instantaneously as it always his. He wipes bloody hands across the breast of his damaged shirt.

“Tea?” he asks, as if their presence isn’t the complete shock that it most definitely should be. “Or would anyone prefer sake?”

Rukia’s not sure what’s changed in the time since she last saw Ichigo, but it’s clear something has, and she’s intent to find out what.

Chapter Text

“So this was the plan all along?”

Isshin smiles widely. “This was the plan all along. Do you like the surprise?”

Ichigo arches an eyebrow.

“Not particularly, no,” he says. “Mostly because it required three years of radio silence. I know you’re a long-lived bunch and all, but to a person who isn’t even twenty, three years is a long time.”

Rukia frowns.

“You were fine,” she says. “Look at you— you’ve done rather well for yourself.”

“I did,” Ichigo agrees. “No thanks to any of the people I called friend, or the people I tore my soul apart for. Just whatever was left of me and my pride. Lucky me, I’ve always been a cocky son of of a bitch.” He pauses. “Spiteful, too.”

There’s an awkward pause.

“Your father thought it best if we cut off all communication,” Ukitake says gently. “It seemed unwise to go against your father’s wishes, especially considering your delicate state of mind.”

“Delicate state of mind?” There is danger in Ichigo’s voice, no matter how pleasant he sounds. “Something my father told you, no doubt.”

“Ichigo—”

“Be quiet, you old bastard,” Ichigo says without bothering to look at his father. “For future reference? Shiba Isshin knows very little about parenting. He knows even less about his children.”

He leans back, an edge to the otherwise pleasant smile he offers.

“You’re lucky I know it’s his fault,” he says. “And you’re lucky I know shinigami are a pretty stupid species.” He spreads his arms, gesturing at the house at large. “Consider me an ally of the Gotei. You’re all welcome, anytime you need me. Your agents, your spies, your soldiers. Consider this little place a… a home away from home.”

“... That’s very kind of you,” Kyoraku says after a moment, smiling slightly at Ukitake. “What do you think about personal calls?”

Ichigo arches an eyebrow.

“What, is my sake better than what you can get ahold of in the Seireitei?”

Kyoraku snorts.

“Something like that.”

“I’d rather have a spar,” Kenpachi grunts.

“Then you’ll have one,” Ichigo says. “I’m sure I could make a trip to the— actually, wait just a moment.” He rises from his chair, slipping back into the hall. He always leaves his bedroom door closed, so it’s easy, really, to check if the key…

There’s a pause, and when the door opens, he finds himself on the training grounds of the eleventh.

“Oh, good,” he mutters, shutting the door again. He’d never actually tried it before, after all— Soul Society always seemed like a bad idea, especially after he lost his powers.

“Sorry, had to check something,” Ichigo says, stepping back into the kitchen. “Yeah, Kenpachi? Anytime you want a fight, just call me. I’m sure Kisuke-san can hook me up with a Denreishinki, right?”

“Of course, Kurosaki-san.”

Ichigo makes a face.

“Awe, Kisuke-san, I thought we were friends,” Ichigo says, tossing him an exaggerated frown despite the glimmer of good humor in his eyes.

Kisuke tugs his hat lower, not bothering to hide his smile.

“Well, I’ve got to be respectful, now,” he says. “I’ve got a feeling you could kick my ass now, if you put your mind to it.”

Ichigo laughs, and it’s loud and it’s easy and it makes Isshin jump.

“I probably could, ómorfos,” Ichigo says. Kisuke flushes, but keeps quiet, ignoring the way Shinji’s eyes widen as he looks between them.

Well, Ichigo probably should have expected that. Shinji’s no slouch, and he did spend a century in the World of the Living. What, did he spend it all in that shitty warehouse? Unlikely.

Whatever. No one else seems to have caught on, and that’s what matters.

“Anyway,” Ichigo says, turning back to the group at large. “Thank you for returning my powers to me. I appreciate it, really. It’s a weight off my mind. Seriously— so much of my anxiety has just…” He rolls his shoulders, sighing. “It’s all gone, really.”

“Why’s that?” Renji asks. “You weren’t happy living a normal life?”

“Well, one, I’m not normal, and there’s a word for the fuckery currently going on in my head: post-traumatic stress disorder. You guys forget that I fought and killed a bunch of human-looking people at sixteen.” Ichigo sees discomfort flit across the faces of the captains. Even Kenpachi looks a little uncomfortale. “And two, even if I was, I did sort of make a name for myself with a few big names in Hueco Mundo. Grimmjow or somebody could have rolled up at any point and killed my entire family and I wouldn’t have been able to do anything to help.”

“You say that as though you haven’t been living with a shinigami the entire—”

“Isshin, you’ve spent the last twenty-some years cooling your heels and playing stupid human,” Ichigo interrupts, still not looking at his father. “And you haven’t done a single thing to try and get back into shape since your powers were returned to you. Grimmjow could crush you like a soft-boiled egg. Hell, his fraccion could do the job, and they’re barely competent.”

Rose is doing his best not to laugh. His best is not enough.

“Anyway,” Ichigo says, nodding his head in thanks when Kisuke moves to refill his sake cup. “Yeah. I’m an ally, you’re all welcome anytime to come over and play checkers or something— though maybe knock first? I bring people over sometimes, and I’m sure none of you would care to catch a peek of what we get up to.”

Ukitake, Rukia, and Renji flush at the implication. Shinji just grins, eyeing Kisuke who pointedly keeps his face blank. Isshin is steadily turning an interesting shade of purple, which Ichigo is keeping idle track of out of the corner of his eye— it wouldn’t do for his father to have an aneurysm at his dinner table, after all.

It’s Byakuya, surprisingly, who simply nods.

“We appreciate the warning,” he says. “It is good to see you bear no ill will despite what was clearly a misstep on our parts.”

Ichigo smiles, and it’s one of the more sincere ones of the evening.

“It’s okay, Byakuya,” he says. “I got over it. Sorta. I mean, I’m smarting a little bit, but it’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

“We meant you no harm, you understand,” Ukitake says, frowning slightly.

“Of course not,” Ichigo says. “But meant or not, it happened.” He glances at his watch. “Anyway, unless you plan on spending the night, you ought to start heading home. I’ve an early start tomorrow morning.”

That’s the Ichigo they all know— blunt, callous, and to the point. In some ways, it’s the most comforting way he could have dismissed them. In some ways, it’s the most insulting thing he could have done. Regardless, they all file out. Rukia hesitates a moment, dawdling in the doorway before Ichigo sighs and opens his arms.

“I’m still angry with you,” he murmurs into her hair.

“I guessed,” Rukia says. “But you’ll forgive me, won’t you?”

A chuckle rumbles deep in Ichigo’s chest.

“Perhaps in another hundred years or so,” he says. “Better make sure you come over every now and again, though.”

Rukia pulls away.

“Of course,” she says simply. “Every day, if you like.”

He smiles crookedly.

“Maybe not every day,” he says, leaning back on his heel. “Like I said— I bring people over, sometimes.”

Rukia swallows.

“Ori— Orihime-chan, you mean?”

Something in Ichigo’s expression sours.

“No,” he says. “It seems my friends among the living had even less cause to speak to me than the dead.”

Rukia looks down.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t realize—”

“I love too quickly and too deeply,” Ichigo says, squeezing her shoulder. “It’s not your fault I’m a pussy.”

“Don’t say that—”

“Rukia, come,” Byakuya calls over his shoulder.

Rukia sighs.

“I’ll come by,” she promises. “Just—” she stops, shaking her head. “I’ll come by. Promise.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” Ichigo says with a nod. “Now go— your brother’s waiting.”

She obeys, leaving Ichigo with nothing to do but close the door behind her.

“Ichigo.”

Ah, fuck.

“Yes, Isshin?” he asks without turning around.

“We need to talk.”

Of course.

“No, we don’t,” Ichigo says, snagging the nearest sake cup and downing it. “I don’t live with you, you don’t support me financially, and anyway— I’m an adult. I don’t need to listen to my dopey dad anymore.”

Something shatters against the wall just left of Ichigo’s head.

“I liked that vase,” Ichigo says absently, glancing at the pieces. Even if he is out of practice, he can feel his reiatsu tingling in his fingertips. It makes him itch. It feels like the thought alone could bring Zangetsu to life, warm and heavy against his palm.

God, he has Zangetsu again. He never thought he’d be able to say that.

“You embarrassed me,” Isshin says. He sounds strained, like he’s doing his best not to start shouting.

Ichigo wishes he’d shout. It’d be quicker that way.

“You shouldn’t do embarrassing things, then,” Ichigo says, finally turning to face him. “Like warn people off your leper son, never mind all his friends being counted among the dead.”

“They weren’t your friends, Ichigo, they were your slaughterhouse,” Isshin says. “They put you up against a man you had no chance of defeating—”

“As opposed to you?” Ichigo asks, tilting his head. “Hiding my heritage from me, letting me fumble in the dark because it was easier to ignore the fact that I saw dead people rather than teaching me about my inheritance from you, from my mother—”

“You know nothing about your mother,” Isshin says dismissively.

Fire flares in Ichigo’s chest.

“ Kurosaki Masaki,” he starts, voice booming. “Was the last pureblood princess of the First Line. She is survived by her half-blood son, Kurosaki Ichigo -oji, and her daughters, Kurosaki Yuzu -hime and Kurosaki Karin -hime. Due to her marriage to a shinigami noble, children of her line are ineligible for the throne.”

The words have been burned into Ichigo’s brain since he first read them in the endless library of the Palace, echoing in the caverns of his memory like a damned advertising jingle. They’re bitter when they roll off his tongue, but they do him the favor of turning Isshin very, very pale.

“How do you know that?” he breathes, taking a step closer. “Who told you?”

“Funny thing— when all your friends suddenly decide they can’t talk to you anymore, you end up with a lot of time on your hands,” Ichigo says, sneering. “Easiest way to fill time when there’s only one television in the house? Reading. And I’ve been reading an awful lot.”

“I burned everything,” Isshin says shortly. “When you were born, I burned everything she had about the Quincy.”

Ichigo shrugs.

“Guess you missed something,” he says. “Anyway, long story short? You’re a terrible father, a miserable coward, and wrong. I’m right, and telling you to leave and never come back. Is that clear?”

Ichigo opens the door. There’s a pause, like Isshin’s debating on taking the out presented to him. Another beat, though, and he goes, stopping only when he’s beside Ichigo.

“You are a Shiba,” he says, looking up at Ichigo. It’s odd; Ichigo hadn’t realized how much taller he’d gotten. “And I am the Head of our Clan. You will obey me, one way or another.”

“First of all, no I’m not,” Ichigo says. “I don’t carry the name Shiba. I’m Kurosaki Ichigo, second of my name. Second of all, you’re not the Head anymore, Kukakku is, and while she doesn’t know me very well, she seems like a fair woman. She’ll take my side over yours. Thirdly— you haven’t actually given me an order to obey. Don’t take that as an invitation, by the way. I’m done listening to you.” Ichigo may not have had his powers in a few years, but he’s still faster than Isshin, still stronger. Isshin doesn’t notice the push until he’s ass over tea kettle in the hall.

“It was lovely having you,” Ichigo says politely as his father sits up. “Now fuck off.”

He shuts the door and locks it, suddenly wishing he’d been just a touch better at kido if only to be able to erect some kind of privacy barrier.

“That went well, considering.”

Ichigo turns around. Kisuke’s sitting on his couch, as if he’d been there the whole time.

“Came back in through the bedroom window?” Ichigo guesses, moving to sit beside him.

“Seemed like the best course of action when I realized Isshin-san hadn’t left.” Kisuke tilts his head. “How did you know? About your mother, I mean.”

Ichigo shrugs.

“I wasn’t lying when I said I read about it,” he says.

“I know,” Kisuke says. “But the phrasing sounded like a quote, and it wouldn’t make any sense if the book you read said she was dead if it had been in her possession before her actual death.”

Ichigo shrugs.

“It’s a magic book,” he says. “Part of a magic library.” He isn’t even lying, which is the funniest part about the way Kisuke wrinkles his nose at him.

“Fine,” Kisuke says. “Keep your secrets, if you like. I’ll figure it out, sooner or later.”

“You won’t figure it out until I want you to figure it out,” Ichigo says, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “But it’s nice you think so well of yourself. Bed?”

“I thought you said you had an early day tomorrow,” Kisuke says, arching an eyebrow.

Ichigo grins.

“I was lying.”

Chapter Text

Ichigo doesn’t see hide nor hair of a shinigami for three days following the return of his powers save for Kisuke, which honestly, was expected. He doesn’t care much, though, preferring the alone time he’s gifted in the time between work and Palace visits. He never sleeps in his world, hasn’t for months. It wastes too much time.

The Palace is where he trains, now, having been gifted with a room that could rival Kisuke’s and the power to destroy it utterly.

Fun fact: Ichigo’s eyes are yellow, now, whenever he leaves his body behind.

The yellow eyes (and some frank conversation with Ossan and Zangetsu— which is a thing Ichigo wasn’t expecting, but whatever, he’s rolling with it) clue him into a few things, specifically this: he’s part hollow, according to the books that keep appearing on his nightstand. Properly part hollow, not just a Visored.

It takes him three months of unending practice in the Palace, but by the end of it, he can shoot motherfucking ceros. He barely has to think about it.

Alongside that, he spends a lot of his free time at Home with Kisuke, sometimes at his Shouten but more often at his apartment, talking and drinking and watching television and, of course, fucking. Ichigo likes his time best when Kisuke’s passed out beside him, silver key shining with a strange, white light against his chest— he’s something to look at, and when Ichigo gets tired of him, he reads. Specifically, he reads Walking Dead.

Glenn dies, as it turns out, according to the comics, at the hands of a man named Negan holding a bat named Lucille. And while on the one hand, the comics aren’t a perfect recounting of the events as Ichigo knows them— Carol, for Christ’s sake, and Daryl— it… it wouldn’t hurt to warn them, right? Glenn seemed a nice enough man, and it would kill Rick to see him die that way.

He really shouldn’t get involved. It’s not his world, after all.

…

It wouldn’t be the first time, though.

Decision made, Ichigo sets aside his book and pushes himself off the bed, careful not to wake Kisuke. Reaching for his key, he makes his way to the bathroom, just in case he wasn’t quite successful in the don’t-wake-Kisuke plan. It isn’t until he reaches the door, actually, that he realizes he’s still naked.

Right, so. Palace first.

The Palace, apparently, has a sense of humor, because every wardrobe Ichigo opens is full of frock coats, like he’s a shitty extra in Interview With the Vampire, or something.

Well, whatever. He’s dealt with worse, and anyway, they already think he’s crazy. Showing up in a white coat embroidered with forget-me-nots is not the weirdest thing he could do.

The jeans he finds, once his coat has been decided, are a bright, highlighter pink, and the tank top is a plain black to go with the steel-toed boots he finds waiting for him by his bed. They’re going to see him from a mile away, looking like the Mad Hatter on his way to a rave. He’s almost tempted to find himself a top hat, just for the occasion, but decides against it before he can ask for one. That would be too much, he thinks.

“Alright,” he says, feeling Zangetsu’s weight forming across his shoulder as he wanders towards the nearest door. “Take me to Rick, please.”

As always, the Palace obliges.

*.*

Somebody’s going to die, and it’s Rick’s fault. Fuck.

“Oh, don’t look so blue, Ricky,” Negan says. “Surely you don’t need all of these people. I mean, you’ve got two black girls— that’s more than enough representation, don’t you think?”

If Rick survives this, he’s going to kill this man. He’s going to kill him with his bare fucking hands.

“I mean, it is the best option,” Negan muses thoughtfully. “It’d be rude to kill the asian guy, after all, since he’s your only asian. The kid, well, I’m sure it’d be fun, but… nah. It always sucks to kill girls, though, maybe I could—”

“Oh, sorry— should I come back later, Rick?”

Rick’s head snaps up so fast it hurts, but he doesn’t care, because, because—

That’s Ichigo, standing in the door of their trailer, looking like he’s pissed off and trying to hide it. How’d he manage to sneak up behind Negan, in full view of his lackeys, Rick doesn’t know, because the kid’s dressed in white and neon, gigantic sword strapped to his back as he surveys the situation slowly, an odd, murderous smile plastered across his face. They hadn’t seen him since he disappeared from his room that night, leaving behind nothing but six month’s worth of food and other necessities like some kind of practical Santa Claus.

“Well, shit,” Negan says, looking between Ichigo and Rick. “If you’ve got two asians, this makes the decision easier.”

“You’re Negan,” Ichigo says, coppery eyes honing in on the man like a laser. “The proper one.”

Negan hefts Lucille onto his shoulder, grinning widely.

“That I am,” he admits. “And who might you be, ginger?”

Ichigo tilts his head to one side.

“Noone of consequence,” he says. “I would, however, appreciate if you put your bat down.”

Negan arches an eyebrow.

“Now why would I do that?” he says, sounding like a cross between gut-busting laughter and genuinely puzzled. “Ricky here owes me something. He killed my men.”

“Yes, I suppose he did,” Ichigo agrees, glancing over at Rick. “But it’s sort of like killing rats. There’s always more, after all, scrambling to whistle from behind trees and grunt about how cool they are.” His eyes cross, his mouth twisting grotesquely. “I’m Negan, I’m Negan, I’m Negan.” He whistles, mimicking the sound of a cuckoo clock. “Gosh, I’m so scary, I named my bat after my dead wife. I bet she wouldn’t be angry that I kill innocent people in her name— ow.”

He looks down, pressing his hand over the blood that seeps through his jacket. He looks up, frowning at the henchman who’d drawn his gun.

“You shot me,” he complains. “I’ve never been shot before.”

Rick wants to strangle this kid. Who talks like that? Who the fuck thinks it’s a good idea to bring a sword to a gunfight? He’s going to die, and Rick’s gonna have the body of a good-hearted drifter on his hands—

Ichigo’s not standing in the trailer door anymore, and somebody’s screaming— the lackey, as it turns out, because his dismembered hand is currently lying in the dirt in front of Rick.

“Stop screaming, it’s only an arm,” Ichigo says, annoyed. “I know a woman half your size who literally had her arm age to dust. Be a goddamn man.”

He looks up at Negan, looking disappointed.

“That’s the problem with lackeys,” he says as the man falls to his knees in front of him, still shrieking. “They’re all such pussies, in the end. That’s why you don’t mind when they die, right? Well, that’s why you don’t mind anymore.”

Negan looks a little disturbed (a lot disturbed, considering Ichigo just fucking teleported), but he does his best to hide it under a scowl.

“Shoot him,” he orders flatly.

“Please don’t,” Ichigo says as every gun points in his direction. “It’s already going to be a pain in the ass to dig out this fucker’s bullet, let alone a dozen more.”

“Don’t worry,” the man nearest assures him, giving him a sick smile. “We’ll make sure we kill you this time.”

Ichigo smiles, but there’s murder in his eyes.

“That’s very kind of you,” he says. “But I’m afraid I simply can’t waste the time.”

His sword hangs loosely in his hand, tip pressed into the dirt beside Carl.

“I am really sorry to have interrupted your monologue,” he says to Negan. “You make a very good villain, what with your principles and style and shit. That bandanna really adds flair to the whole weekend-dad look. But I really need you to not kill anyone— I like them.”

Negan looks properly pissed, now, brow furrowed angrily as he glares at Ichigo from over Rick’s head.

“I said,” he says slowly. “Shoot him!”

There’s the sound of gunfire. Rick and his people throws themselves onto the dirt, hands over their heads.

“What the—”

A head joins the arm on the ground. Then a dozen more.

“Sorry,” Ichigo says, waving a hand in Rick’s face. “I’ve been trying out new personas— you’ve got to have a gimmick, when you’re a shinigami, and they’ve already got like, six broody young warrior types. I’ll need a new act for when I join the Gotei proper.”

Rick doesn’t understand half the words coming out of the kid’s mouth, can’t reconcile the heads on the ground with the fifteen seconds of gunfire the preceded them. He has no idea what’s going on, but he’s scared and relieved because maybe nobody important’s going to die today—

There’s a flash of steel in the half-light of fire and moonlight behind Ichigo’s head, but before Lucille can make contact, Ichigo’s hand flashes up, catching the wire-wrapped wood and glaring.

“You’re very rude,” Ichigo informs Negan, heedless of the blood dripping from his torn hand. “I’m trying to have a conversation here, Negan.”

His arm flexes as he squeezes, and a moment later, the wood explodes under the pressure. Negan jumps back, dropping what’s left of the bat.

“What— what the fuck are you?” Negan demands, eyes wide with shock and maybe a little fear.

“I’m what happens when naughty boys play with things that aren’t there’s,” Ichigo informs him, wiping his bloody hand on his white coat. “But you’re handsome, Negan, so I’m going to give you a chance. Sit down and be quiet, and maybe Rick’ll spare your life and keep you in that handy cell he has in Alexandria.”

Ichigo looks back to Rick, hand extended once more.

“On your feet, sheriff,” he says, smiling slightly. “You’re not the sort of man who belongs on his knees.”

It’s the hand that had gripped Lucille, still bloody and miraculously still five-fingered, but when Rick reaches up, he finds no cuts, no evidence of the mauling that definitely should have been there.

“You… you…”

Ichigo shushes him.

“We can talk about it later, Rick,” he says. “But for right now, I think you ought to make sure everyone’s a-okay. If you point me in the right direction, I can take him back to Alexandria.”

Ichigo jerks a thumb at Negan, rooted to the spot and pale in the face of the new, unknown terror of this… kid.

Rick can’t find the words to express… he doesn’t have the words, full stop. There are no words in his persona, dictionary to explain everything that is happening. Did it happen? Is this another hallucination, like the one in the prison? Is he dead, and this is some kind of fucked up heaven?

“Rick,” Ichigo says again, voice gentle. “Rick, which way to Alexandria?”

“Maggie,” he blurts out, looking at the woman. “Maggie’s— her baby.”

Ichigo’s eyes narrow, and he turns back to Negan.

“You decided to fuck with these nice people,” he says, words dangerously soft. “When the pregnant lady was having trouble?”

Negan swallows, back hitting the trailer in his effort to put distance between himself and the bugfuck crazy Japanese guy.

“Ichigo,” Maggie says. She hasn’t moved from her spot. “It’s fine. But the roads are blocked, and I really—”

Ichigo head snaps around, eyes focusing on Maggie.

“Right, yeah,” he says. “Of course. Where are you going? I can get you there in a minute, provided I’m given directions.”

He reaches down to give her a hand, glancing at Glenn.

“I can bring you along, too,” he adds. “Two trips won’t take much, once I know where I’m going.”

Glenn looks at Rick. Rick looks at Maggie, then at Ichigo. Then he nods.

“Hilltop is that way,” he says, pointing down the road. “Take a right when you hit the farm.”

Ichigo nods sharply, hooking an arm behind Maggie’s knees and hoisting her up, bridal style.

“Five minutes,” he says. “I’ll be back in a flash. And Negan?” He adds, turning to look at the man. “Don’t cause anymore trouble, alright? Because I’ll put your head on a pike in front of your compound.”

With a final nod to Rick, he and Maggie disappear, leaving behind nothing but a breathe.

“... So, what, he’s an X-man?” Abraham says after a moment. “Shit, we could use an X-Man.”

Rick can’t help it. He laughs, and he keeps laughing.

Chapter Text

Maggie makes him stop about half a mile away from Hilltop before he goes and picks up Glenn.

“You’ll want to keep your superpowers to yourself,” she explains, trying for a smile and landing somewhere between a frown and a grimace. “People like you attract attention, you know, and attention’s never the good kind, nowadays.”

Maggie’s a practical woman. Ichigo likes her immensely.

“Guess you see I wasn’t lying, before,” he says ruefully, setting her down on the road. “Sorry. I probably shouldn’t have— your world’s probably a lot like mine. This kind of stuff isn’t the norm.”

He’s nervous, suddenly, about her reaction. He’s never shown anyone his powers before, never been able to manifest them without leaving his body. He doesn’t know how normal people react to this sort of stuff— even his Human friends could at least see spirits, by the end.

“Ichigo,” Maggie says, catching him by the shoulder. “I think you’re having a bit of a crisis right now, and while I understand that, remember— I need to see the doctor.”

Right.

“Sorry,” Ichigo says, tamping down on his discomfort. “I’ll get Glenn. Don’t move unless you have to kill something.”

He steps away, then kicks into shunpo, leaving her in the distance as he makes his way back to the trailer on the side of the road.

“Glenn, you’re next,” he announces from just over the man’s shoulder, making him jump.

“Oh, Jesus—”

“Nope, that would be Paul,” Ichigo says, already moving to pick him up. “Off we go.”

*.*

Once Glenn and Maggie are safely in the doctor’s office on Hilltop, Ichigo decides to take a moment and cool his heels. He’s not looking forward to the conversation that’s waiting for him in Alexandria— he’s scared them all, revealing his powers like that.

It’s kind of weird. He’s never really been able to do this sort of thing, on his previous trips to populated universes. He’s never been the one with the crazy abilities who can save the day. Normally, he’s just the crazy guy who blows into town for a few days and listens to the stories the people who live there tell him. He’s always been an observer, not an active member.

It’s… Ichigo doesn’t know how he feels about it.

“Hey.”

Ichigo looks up into the face of a cheerful-looking bearded man.

“Hello.”

“I’m Jesus,” the man says, because of course he is. “You’re Ichigo, right? Maggie and Glenn’s friend?”

Jesus is one of Ichigo’s favorite characters, in the comic books. He wonders if the man in front of him is anything like his artistic rendering.

“I am,” he says, holding out a hand to shake. “Nice to meet you, Jesus.”

Jesus smiles at him, and oh— he’s got happy eyes.

“Mind if I sit with you?” he asks.

“Uh, sure.” Ichigo shifts over on the step.

“Thanks, man.” Jesus settles into the space beside him, drawing up his long, skinny legs so he can balance his elbows. “So, what’cha think?”

“Of Hilltop?” Ichigo hums. “Different than I expected. Nice, though.”

“And what were you expecting?”

Ichigo shrugs.

“I’m not sure, exactly.”

Jesus hums.

“You know, you’re covered in an awful lot of blood,” he says conversationally. “It shows especially bad on white.”

Ichigo glances down. He’d rather forgotten.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I have another one.”

“Really?” Jesus shifts. “Where?”

Ichigo shrugs, looking away. He doesn’t much feel like talking.

“That’s okay if you don’t wanna say,” Jesus says. “It’s admirable, that you’re trying to protect your community. But you ought to know— we won’t hurt your people. We don’t have the weapons even if we wanted to.”

“I don’t have a community,” Ichigo says. “Just me.”

Jesus watches him intently.

“You must take good care of yourself, then,” he says. “Pardon my saying, but you don’t like the world’s been particularly rough with you.”

Ichigo snorts.

“I suppose that’s a compliment, nowadays.”

“You could take it that way.” Jesus shifts. “Seriously, though— if you want a change of clothes, I could give you something to wear. You look about my size.”

Ichigo smiles wryly.

“I can’t take anything from you,” he says. “Not when you have so little already.”

“And you don’t?”

“I’ve more than you,” Ichigo promises him. “It’s alright, really— I can handle a bit of blood.”

“Maybe you can, but the citizens can’t,” Jesus says frankly. “I guess you haven’t noticed, but you’re scaring the shit out of the guards.”

Ichigo looks up and indeed, there are maybe six people armed with literal pointed sticks, watching him carefully from their positions on the walls.

“Ah, right.” Ichigo plucks at his ruined coat. “... I suppose I could borrow something. Just for tonight.”

“That’s what I thought.” Jesus pats him on the shoulder. “Come on— I’ll show you my place.”

*.*

Daryl has been quiet since Ichigo showed up and killed their captors, tense and prickly and far too scared for Rick’s comfort. Luckily, Rick’s pretty sure he knows why he’s so prickly, and intends to rectify the situation as soon as possible.

Negan is silent when they lock him up in Morgan’s little jail, still pale and confused and compliant in a way that Rick suspects isn’t natural. Still, it means their stop is quick, which is great when there’s still shit that needs to be done.

Go to Hilltop, talk to Ichigo. In that order.

Ichigo was crazy, but a good enough sort by Glenn’s estimation when Michonne went to wake him up for breakfast and found him gone and the bedroom full of food that they’d only dreamt of over the last few years. How he’d gotten it in without waking any of them was a miracle in and of itself, though now that Rick’s seen the guy teleport and literally slaughter twenty people without appearing to move. Also, he took a bullet to the chest and stayed standing. Rick hopes he had that seen to.

Maybe there was more truth to those fairytales he’d spouted off to Maggie and Father Gabriel than Rick had initially thought.

So, once Negan’s handled, they pile into the car— specifically Rick, Daryl, and Carl, who hadn’t given Rick the chance to deny him before he’d settled into the back of the broken down Honda that they’d decided to take— and drive.

*.*

“He passed out,” Jesus tells them when he meets Rick at the gate. “One minute he was getting changed, and the next, he was out cold on my bed. Figured it’d be best to leave him— it was a hard night, from what Maggie said.”

Rick feels his face tighten.

“He was shot,” he says. “By one of the Saviors. It could be blood loss.”

“Shot?” Jesus’ brow furrows. “Where?”

“Chest,” Daryl grunts, the first word he’d said in some ten hours. “Didn’t even slow him down.”

Jesus glances between them frowning.

“I saw him,” he says. “He wasn’t shot. Just bloody.”

“I’d appreciate it if you took us to him,” Rick says. “For my own peace of mind.”

Jesus nods, leading them to a small house on the far side of Hilltop, directing to him to the small bedroom at the back.

Ichigo’s curled up in a ball on top of the sheets, wearing a pair of unbuttoned gray jeans that must belong to Jesus and a faded sweatshirt, His face is pressed into the pillow, orange hair sticking to his cheek by force of drool alone.

“How long’s he been like this?” Rick asks, glancing at Jesus.

He shrugs.

“Four hours?” he says. “A little less, maybe.”

“Where’s his sword?” Carl asks, glancing around.

“He didn’t have a sword.”

Rick glares at Carl.

“Probably left it in the trailer,” he says, turning back to Jesus. “He seems to like us well enough, so I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Jesus shifts.

“Let’s let him sleep,” he says. “Hungry?”

He leads them back into the main room, then proceeds to make sandwiches, because Jesus is cool like that.

“He’s not one of yours,” he says as he slathers lard onto bread. “He wasn’t in Alexandria when I was there. There’s no record of him.”

Rick thinks about his response. He doesn’t know why, but he gets the feeling superpowers aren’t a very nice thing to spring on people.

“He’s a drifter,” he says finally. “Showed up a couple months ago. Haven’t seen him since he spent the night. Good kid. Little crazy.”

“I noticed,” Jesus says dryly, slicing up an onion. “So he helped you, last night? Against the Saviors?”

“... Yeah,” Rick says. “If he hadn’t shown up, well… one of us might not have seen dawn, at least.”

Jesus hums.

“He seems… young,” he says finally. “Sort of… odd, you know?”

“No different from anyone else,” Carl says. “When’s the last time you met anyone normal, anyway?”

Jesus chuckles.

“I guess you have a point,” he agrees. “But still. He’s different.”

“I like to stand out in a crowd,” Ichigo says from the doorway, making them all start. “Hi, sorry— I was really tired.”

Jesus cracks a grin.

“It’s fine,” he says. “Go on, have a seat. Hungry?”

Ichigo hesitates.

“Uh, no, you don’t have to feed me,” he says. “I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?” Jesus asks. “There’s plenty to go around.”

Ichigo shakes his head and takes the chair nearest to the bedroom, beside Carl.

“So,” he says, folding his hands between his legs. “I guess you wanna talk about last night?”

Rick glances at Jesus, uncertain.

“Oh, he’s alright,” Ichigo says. “I’ve read everything I can find about him. He’s a good guy, knows when to keep his mouth shut. Right, Paulie?”

Jesus freezes.

“How do you know my name?” he asks, turning to look at Ichigo fully.

Ichigo shrugs.

“I’m from another universe,” he says. “In my universe— and I didn’t find this out ‘til I went home,” he adds, looking at Rick. “You’re all characters in a comic book.”

“Bullshit,” Carl says immediately.

Ichigo gives him a humorless smile.

“Seriously,” he says. “Though, I kinda fucked up the timeline for you guys, getting involved. In the comics, Glenn got killed last night. Negan busts his head in.”

Rick flinches, and Ichigo shrugs apologetically.

“That’s why I showed up when I did,” he says. “Time’s kinda… wonky, between the worlds. I read it, and I figured you could use the warning, at least— arm up, prepare. You know, that sort of thing.”

“I’m confused,” Jesus says, looking between them all. “‘Between the worlds’? ‘My universe’?”

“I’m a… I don’t know, a visitor, I guess,” Ichigo says. “I have a magic key I use to travel between dimensions.”

Jesus blinks.

“... Right.”

“I’m also technically dead,” Ichigo continues, looking back to Rick. “I got my powers back recently, which means I’ve got a magic sword made of my soul and run really fast, basically. And I heal fast. And I can shoot balls of energy out of my palm.”

He shrugs awkwardly in the face of their stares, picking at his borrowed sweatshirt carefully.

“I— the way I got here doesn’t really matter,” Ichigo says. “But I’ve been able to do it since I was a kid. I tend to… pass through, I guess. I tend to find worlds a little more different than mine— except for the walkers, everything is scarily familiar— and it’s a personal policy of mine not to meddle.”

“So why did you?” Carl asks, tipping back his hat to look Ichigo squarely in the eye. “Why did you meddle with us?”

“Ah…” Ichigo runs a sheepish hand through his hair. “Well, you’re good people, and… well, you helped me out in a moment of crisis. Like I told Maggie, I was in a war, and I sort of— I stumbled into your world by accident. Post-nightmare panic, you know. I needed to kill something, and I was provided with zombies.”

Daryl is watching him like he doesn’t quite trust him, Jesus looks confused, and Rick… Rick looks contemplative.

“So… you’re… a ghost, of some kind,” he says carefully, pulling on memories from Ichigo’s last visit. “And you travel through universes for… fun?”

“I did,” Ichigo says. “I stopped the visits after some… interesting revelations.”

“Meaning?” Daryl grunts.

Ichigo shifts.

“Well,” he starts, leaning back in his chair. “Have you ever heard of the Multiverse Theory?”

Chapter Text

“So you can go anywhere,” Rick says. “To any world you or anyone else has ever thought of?”

“That’s about right,” Ichigo says. “I didn’t figure it out until your comics came up in conversation. Once that happened, I did a little digging, and…” he trails off, shrugging. “I never questioned it before, honestly. It was a wake-up call.”

“If you can do this,” Daryl says slowly. “Does that mean… you could take us out of this shit hole? Take us somewhere where this bullshit wasn’t happening? Where everybody’d be safe?”

Ichigo sobers.

“No,” he says softly, looking away. “No, I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Why?” Jesus asks. He’s been quiet for the most part, preferring to listen to Ichigo ramble in between Rick’s questions. He sounds… not like he believes him, exactly, but that he’s intrigued by the concept.

“When I was about ten, I fell in love with this… dog-thing,” Ichigo says. “I loved it so much I decided I was going to bring it home with me and keep it. The moment I passed from my world to the next, he turned to dust in my hand. People… people belong in their own universes. No matter how much I want to change things, I can’t change that. I’m the exception, not the rule.”

Carl looks disappointed. So does Rick, but he hides it better.

“So what now?” he asks. “You’ve changed our destiny, so what happens next?”

Ichigo shrugs.

“I go back to my world, I guess,” he says. “I’ve never stayed more than a fews days in any one place unless I had to, and save for you guys, I’ve only revisited one other place.”

Rick nods, eyes distant as he thinks.

“You could visit us again,” Carl says. “We could use a guy like you, now and then.”

“... I suppose you could,” Ichigo agrees after a moment. “But I don’t quite belong in your world, and I don’t know what will happen if I keep messing around with it.”

“Well, you’ve already done it once,” he says. “Twice, if you count the supplies you left us last time. What’s a little more interference?”

“Point.” Ichigo shifts, pushing himself to his feet. “Well, anyway, lovely talking to you guys. I’m glad everyone’s okay.”

“You’re leaving?” Jesus says.

“Uh, yes.” Ichigo glances down at the sweatshirt. “I’ll bring this back, if you want. Or a different one. I’ve got stuff at home, if you want anything.”

“No, no— that’s fine,” Jesus says. “You can keep it. Fits you better anyway.”

Ichigo thinks he’s lying, but is polite enough not to say anything, turning around to shut the bedroom door as he draws his key from around his neck.

“Ichigo—?”

“Maybe I’ll come visit,” he says, pressing the key against a lock that probably wasn’t there a moment ago. “See how you’re doing. You’re all really good people.”

The door opens, and his apartment’s hallway is waiting for him, wallpaper slightly yellowed from smoke and age. He steps through quickly, door snapping shut behind him, and that’s that, really.

Ichigo’s never been very good at goodbyes.

*.*

Kisuke wakes up to the sound of a door closing, and finds himself alone in the bed.

“Ichigo?”

There’s a pause.

“Just going to buy cigarettes from around the corner,” Ichigo calls from the other room. “I’ll be back in a flash.”

Kisuke lets his head fall back on his pillow.

“You can bum some of mine,” he says. “Come back to bed, it’s…” he glances at the clock on the nightstand. “Three-thirty in the morning.”

“Three-forty-three, actually,” Ichigo says as he slips back into the room, fully dressed and bright-eyed in a way that should be illegal, considering the hour.

“Don’t care,” Kisuke says. “It’s so late it’s almost early. Come lay down— you’ve got work tomorrow.”

Ichigo smiles slightly, obliging him after a moment’s consideration.

“It’s a wonder you can sleep,” Ichigo says. “Karakura at night is something to behold.”

“I’m catching up on my last century’s worth of sleepless nights,” Kisuke says, letting his eyes slip closed as Ichigo throws an arm around his waist. “Besides, I was never one for the club scene.”

“Not even in your probably misspent youth?”

“Nope.” Ichigo is warm. Kisuke appreciates that. “I was too busy sneaking around with Yoruichi and sticking my nose into things it didn’t belong in.”

“I’m sure you stuck your nose in something.”

“Sex jokes, Ichigo? That’s crude.”

“If shinigami are to be believed, that would be perfectly in character, for me.”

“Renji, perhaps,” Kisuke murmurs. “Not you. You turned into a tomato when Yoruichi changed shape in front of you.”

“Unexpected breasts are not polite to spring on a naked teenager sitting in naked in a hot spring,” Ichigo says, unbothered.

“In your opinion, maybe,” Kisuke says. “Shinigami are stupid, and their opinions are not to be trusted.”

“Aren’t you a shinigami, too?”

“I’m the exception.”

“Of course.”

*.*

Kyouraku can feel Urahara’s reiatsu emanating from Ichigo’s small apartment, when he appears in front of the door with a bottle of sake that particular evening. It’s an interesting development, at the very least, and while Shunsui himself isn’t one to gossip, well… if he was, this would be something to talk about.

Kurosaki Ichigo, savior of Soul Society, shacking up with former spy and mentor Urahara Kisuke. Oh, the talk that would follow that revelation…

He wonders if Isshin knows. Probably not, considering the fiasco on the night they’d returned Ichigo his powers. He wouldn’t take it well, Shunsui thinks. He’d consider it a betrayal, or some such nonsense, as if it were wrong to keep the identity of your sexual partners a secret from your clearly idiotic parents.

The door opens before he can collect himself to knock, revealing a shirtless Ichigo.

“Felt you coming,” he says. “It’s a surprise to see you here, Kyouraku-taicho.”

Kyouraku smiles apologetically and holds up the sake bottle.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he says. “But if I’m interrupting anything, I can come back another time. Hello, Urahara-san.”

“Hello, taicho.” The blond gives him a little wave, eyes unfocused as he melts into the couch. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Don’t tell anyone, but I’m running a den of iniquity,” Ichigo says wryly, opening the door properly. “Care to join us, taicho?”

Shunsui smiles, stepping inside.

Chapter Text

The fact of the matter is that Kyouraku is very, very old, no matter how spry he looks. He can tell when people are like him— when they’re older than the faces they wear.

Ichigo’s like that. He’s old like that.

It’s an unusual thing to notice, especially considering that he knows for a fact that Ichigo is still a teenager. Or he’s pretty sure he’s a teenager. Maybe early twenties? Well, regardless, he’s definitely under thirty, so the fact that he’s clearly older is… worrying? No, not worrying, not really. All sorts of strange things happen in the world, and they idea of Ichigo wearing a face that doesn’t match his soul isn’t even close to being the strangest thing out there. So it’s just unusual.

Ichigo smokes like a chimney as he and Kisuke talk in circles about music and movies that Shunsui’s never heard of. There’s music floating through the cramped little apartment, something smooth and soothing, and the strange, thick smoke that rises from the tip of Ichigo’s cigarette is making Shunsui feel light-headed, his body loose and relaxed where he’s settled himself in a small, squashy armchair.

The lovebirds have forgotten about him, it seems, too wrapped up in giggling at each other in between murmured words that Kyoraku can’t quite catch but thinks he can guess.

He had that sort of easiness, once— a very long time ago.

It’s strange— he didn’t particularly know Urahara well during his brief captaincy, but the man had never struck him as the romantic type. Even during his long-winded whirlwind of an affair with the princess of the Shihoin house, he’d never been sweet with her like he is with Ichigo now. He’d always been more… subservient. Following her will rather than chasing his own passion.

Ichigo’s fingers tangle absently around the silver chain hanging from Urahara’s neck. That’s a symptom of time, Shunsui thinks idly. A century ago, the spy Kisuke had been would never be caught wearing something so potentially compromising as jewelry in public.

Ichigo’s speaking, his mouth curving around a language Shunsui doesn’t understand but clearly Urahara does, judging by the light flush that steals across his face and travels down his neck. Shunsui’s staring, he knows he is, absent curiosity tracking the fuzzy, delicate movements as Urahara reaches up and hooks his thumb on a plain leather cord hanging from Ichigo’s neck, tugging his partner closer until he leans over to kiss him, the key hanging from the cord tumbling gracelessly over the threadbare collar of his shirt.

Shunsui’s eyes widen. No, that can’t be—

“See something you like, Kyoraku-san?”

Shunsui jerks, not quite able to keep his expression blank when he meets Ichigo’s warm, come-hither gaze.

“You’re Keymasters,” he blurts out, eyes wide. “Both of you.”

“I beg your pardon, Kyoraku-taicho?” Kisuke asks, brow furrowing as he struggles to focus his eyes on someone other than the bright-haired young man in his lap.

Shunsui pushes himself to his feet, more to give his body something to do than with any purpose. At some point during the evening, he’d lost the soft pink hoodie Nanao-chan had procured for him, leaving only the strange, flower-patterned tank top that he actually rather liked and would definitely cycle into his off-duty wardrobe after this.

“Keymasters,” he says, more to himself than to them. “I never thought I would set eyes on your kind again.”

Now, Ichigo sits up, eyes narrowed with the barest beginnings of anger as he balances himself against Urahara’s shoulder.

“Keymasters?” Ichigo asks pointedly.

Shunsui swallows.

“World-walkers,” he says. “The People of Beginning and End, who cross between dimensions like I’d walk between rooms. The literal creators of this universe, and every other.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“So I’m actually a god,” Ichigo says after a moment, eyes widening. “Somebody go tell Aizen.”

Whatever panic attack Kyoraku was on the verge of having comes to a screeching halt.

“What?”

“Nothing. In-joke.” Ichigo sighs, sitting back against Kisuke. “So there’s a precedent for people like us.”

“Like us?” Urahara repeats curiously.

Ichigo pauses.

“Yeah, people like us,” he repeats. “People who have keys that lead to impossible places.”

Urahara continues to blink dumbly up at Ichigo, who rolls his eyes and looks away.

“I’ll explain it to him later,” Ichigo tells Kyoraku, ignoring him. “There’s no blood north of the pelvis right now, you’ll have to excuse him.”

“... Right.” Shunsui sort of figured, in the distant recesses of his mind where his rationality was currently hiding. Still, he would have preferred not to hear it.

“So,” Ichigo says when Kyoraku doesn’t speak again. “What’s Keymaster mean in the context of a racist, monarchal city-state full of uppity ghosts with trigger-happy assassin-cults?”

“You should leave immediately,” Shunsui says flatly. “Unohana-san tore the last ones who dared cross our borders to bits. No telling what sort of chaos immortal creatures with power beyond our imaginings or consequences might do to the delicate balance of the worlds.”

Ichigo hums.

“Probably not going to happen,” he says. “My sisters are here. Yoruichi and Tessai are here.”

“You must,” Kyoraku insists. “Or you’ll mess everything up.”

“Mess everything up— I was born here, you asshole,” Ichigo growls. “Kisuke’s been a spirit for a couple hundred years. I can’t mess up a world I’m supposed to be in.”

“You’re not of this Earth,” Shunsui says. “You are, were, and always will be one of them. That key was yours from the moment your spark was caught in existence.” He straightens to his full height.

“You seem like a good man, Kurosaki Ichigo,” Shunsui says. “And I know your heart is in the right place. But I have protected the Worlds of the Living and the Dead for almost as long as I can remember, and you will not bring this world peace if you remain.”

“So it’s duty that tells you I have to go.” Ichigo glances at Kisuke. “That we have to go.”

“Caution,” he says. “Experience. Wariness. Take your pick.”

Ichigo hums.

“And what will you do if we don’t leave?” he asks, tilting his head curiously. “You just said we had god-like powers.”

Shunsui doesn’t think Ichigo will hurt him, he’s not that sort of man, but he isn’t an idiot, either. He’ll understand exactly what Shunsui means, so he squares his shoulders and grits his teeth when he meets Ichigo’s eyes.

“Whatever we need to do,” he says.

Ichigo stares at him a moment, gaze unreadable, then nods.

“Understood,” he says coolly, pushing himself to his feet. “I think you ought to leave now, Kyoraku-san. Let me walk you out.”

Ichigo moves to his feet like a cat, elegance in motion and a woman’s pair of gym shorts as he slips past Shunsui to get the door for him.

Shunsui wastes no time, gathering his things to follow him. There’s fear in his heart, to be sure— all of a sudden, the little boy who cowered behind Yamamoto’s legs as he spoke to a man with skin made of fire rides at the forefront of Shunsui’s mind, tugging at the reins of his thoughts and his actions to quicken his escape from the suddenly cramped little apartment.

He doesn’t think about it when Ichigo spends a moment fiddling with the doorknob, not until he steps across the threshold of Ichigo’s apartment to the slightly off hallway and feels, in vivid, vicious clarity, each of his atoms crumble apart.

Then, he doesn’t think anything anymore.

Chapter Text

“Ichigo?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t understand what’s going on. At all.” There’s a quiet thread of wonder in Kisuke’s voice, like maybe he hasn’t experienced the feeling in a long, long time.

“I know, schatz, I know.” Ichigo pats him lightly on the head. “You ate a lot of acid today, it’s not your fault.”

“So did you, though.”

“I’m used to that stuff, though,” Ichigo says absently, peering through the doorway at the hall of his not-apartment. He’s never purposefully conjured up a world like his, and considering the near-perfection of the universe… hmm. He’ll have to study that further.

First, though, he needs to go to the Palace.

“Kisuke, can you sit here alone for a second?” he asks. “I just need to run to the corner store really quick.”

“You’re leaving me?”

Kisuke’s reactions to recreational drugs are nothing like Ichigo expected. Rather than paranoia, or perhaps philosophical rambling, Kisuke goes soft, vulnerable. His mind slows down, which frightened him, the first time— or it would have, if Ichigo hadn’t been there to explain everything to him in the entles way he could, running one soothing up and down along his spine.

Basically he gets really, really stupid.

“Only for a second, Kisuke.” Ichigo leans forward, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “I’ll turn on the TV for you, okay? You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

“I always notice when you’re gone,” Kisuke murmurs, but he settles back into cushions even as he complains. Oh, he’s so sweet. It’s almost enough for Ichigo to want to hold off on the urgent trip he needs to make to the Palace Library— but he can’t. He doesn’t know how long it will take for the shinigami to notice they’re short a captain, and he needs to find out as much as he can before they come knocking— which, depending on how well he’s being monitored now that his powers have returned, could be minutes, or it could be days. Either way, he needs to go.

“Two seconds,” he tells Kisuke, reaching for the remote and flicking on the television. “Promise.”

Kisuke hums, eyes finally sliding away from Ichigo’s face towards the television, which Ichigo had helpfully switched on a few hours so they could marathon Sailor Moon, which apparently is a secret obsession of Kisuke’s.

The amusement he feels over the reminder almost makes Ichigo feel better as he slips out, closing the Palace doors behind him.

“Alright,” Ichigo says, clapping his hands together as his face hardens into grim determination. “Everything you have on Keymasters. Everything.”

The Palace obliges without bothering to hide its machinations— it visibly twists and pulls in its haste to obey him, the air filling with an excited tension that makes Ichigo’s skin itch. He ignores it, though, reaching for a book lying on a table that hasn’t finished forming, collapsing into a half-finished cushion as he cracks open the volume.

The Archived Diary of Hades, Born of the Titans Gaia and Kronos of the True Greek Pantheon, Ruler of the Dead and Keymaster of the Halls of Creation

Archived by Alice Liddel, of the Primary Wonderland Tales

It’s in English. As always, that won’t be an issue.

*.*

“This is fucking insane,” Ichigo mutters into his coffee cup. He hasn’t slept in sixteen hours, eyes bloodshot but stubbornly remaining open as he gorges on the history of R2D2, a Keymaster born to an original universe birthed in the universe that created Ichigo’s universe and was echoed in Ichigo’s. “This is so fucking crazy, do you realize that?”

There’s no one else there, of course. It’s been fifteen days.

*.*

“I can’t go back, fuck, I can’t go back now...” Ichigo crumples at the foot of a tall oak tree, sobbing messily into his hands. The walk had been a good idea when he’d thought of it, a break from the snaking, twisting threads that connect every universe Ichigo or literally any other sentient being could think of to collect his thoughts and maybe relax.

As Ichigo is discovering, it is not a good idea, because now he can think of other things, like Kisuke, and his sisters, and Shunsui turning to dust because Ichigo pushed him through a magic fucking door that Ichigo opened for the purpose of—

Murder. Fucking… murder.

Ichigo’s killed people before— or, he’s killed sentient, people-shaped people with thoughts and feelings and traumas just like everybody else— but it was different. He was fighting people who wanted to hurt his friends, killing people who tried to kill him. He was a soldier, and yeah, he feels guilty about it, he still has nightmares about it, but—

He was a soldier. Even before he knew the extent of what he’d gotten himself into, he’d been one.

Shunsui wasn’t killing a man in a fair fight on a battlefield. Ichigo pushed him through a door and dusted him.

Shit.

*.*

“I am a fucking god,” Ichigo bellows over the balcony, wine sloshing out of the bottle and dying the white stone red. “I can do whatever the fuck I want! Who was he to order me away? To tell me to stay away from my family, my friends?” He pauses, chest heaving as he catches his breath and quenches his thirst. He hums thoughtfully. “Though, they weren’t very good friends, come to think of it…”

*.*

“I have to run. I can’t go back. It’ll be too hard on the girls, and what could happen? They’ll kill them— but they might kill them anyway, shit—” Ichigo paces back and forth across the wreckage of his preferred rooms, bare as the day he was born and tearing at his overlong hair. It’s been a few months, at least— Ichigo’s lost track between the tomes and treatises left behind by his— by his people. Because they are all his people, species aside— they’ve all highlighted that much at least in their neat notations and long, sloppy-handed philosophical ramblings. There are a lot of contradicting ideas, a lot of theories and arguments and the whole of it doesn’t really make much sense to Ichigo, and it doesn’t really matter, either, because—

“I don’t know what to do,” he whispers, leaning heavily against the desk half-buried under books and scrolls. “I don’t know what to do. What can I do? Stay and ruin everything? I—”

The bedroom door creaks open ominously behind him, and he turns to look.

There’s a balcony made of dark stone overlooking a view of a deep orange desert. Frowning, Ichigo pushes himself to his feet, padding across the lush carpet of the bedroom and out the door.

The heat is startling when he crosses the threshold, the air dry and thin and the wind biting at his bare skin. Ichigo feels his heartbeat tic upward as his breath quickens to compensate, jumping slightly when the door swings shut behind him with a bang.

Well, it seems the Palace wants him here. It’s never done that before, but Ichigo will bite. He’s been a bit of a handful, recently.

The view is like nothing Ichigo’s ever seen. Twin suns hang high in the reddish skies, the landscape entirely desert save for a grid pattern of dark stone mansions and a long road leading to a glowing city of red stone and white lights.

Entranced, he doesn’t hear the other person slip onto the balcony until they’re right beside him.

“It’s unusual to have guests so late into the day,” the woman says, making Ichigo jump. “Especially of the nudist type.”

Ichigo flushes and moves to cover himself instinctively.

“Not my usual scene, ma’am,” he admits, looking into a decidedly Human face and finding amusement there. “Er, I should… go?”

The woman chuckles, Raising one hand in a familiar gesture. Around her wrist hangs a charm bracelet, a small golden key jingling against shapes of butterflies and birds.

“I’ve had more than my fair share of compromising travel,” she says, smiling at him. “Come on— I’ll find you something to wear and you can tell me what happened, Mr…?”

“Ichigo,” Ichigo says faintly, eyes darting to the sleeve that now covers her wrist. “You’re a Keymaster too, then?”

“I prefer Keykeeper, but yes,” the woman admits, nodding approvingly. “It’s nice to meet you, Ichigo. You may call me Mother.”

Chapter Text

Mother is towards the latter end of an eleven month pregnancy, she explains once he’s dressed and seated in a beautiful office of glowing glass computer screens and scrolls of some kind of alien script. That’s why, for the most part, she’s kept to her house, amidst lists upon lists of baby names for boys and girls.

“A concession my husband made to my Human nature,” Mother explains, settling herself carefully into the chair behind the desk. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Your husband… isn’t Human, then?”

Mother shakes her head.

“Vulcan,” she says. “An alien race from a planet far from Terra. Sarek is… probably the best man I’ve ever met.” She presses a button, and a moment later, there is hot chocolate being poured by a machine folded into the wall behind her desk.

“How old are you, Ichigo?” she asks reaching setting one of the tall, silver goblets before him. “You look like you’re not even twenty.”

“I think…” Ichigo pauses thoughtfully, biting his lip as he counts. “Well, I suppose about six hundred and forty, thereabouts? Maybe a bit younger. I’ve started going by the decades.”

Mother blinks, mouth parting slightly in surprise.

“Six hundred, and you’re only just starting to question your heritage?”

“I didn’t really think to care,” Ichigo says, shrugging. “I’ve always had a key. It’s just how it’s always been.” He runs a hand through his hair. “But then, some things happened, and someone I know used the word… and made threats.”

Mother’s jaw tightens.

“I understand,” she says, lifting her own glass to her lips. She drains it quickly as if to steady her nerves before setting it back down again.

“I can’t drink,” she admits, smiling slightly when she sees his confusion. “But chocolate is considered an intoxicant here, so in a way, I am doing exactly what I’d like to do.” She sets down the empty glass and folds her hands over the curve of her belly, smile dimming to something sad.

“Your world had knowledge of our people,” she says, sighing. “It always ends badly, when that sort of thing happens. It always hurts whichever of us was unlucky to be born to that world.”

“What happens?”

Mother shrugs.

“If you return too often, they’ll tear your home universe apart looking for you, eventually,” she says. “I don’t know how it happens, exactly, but the knowledge always ends up falling into the hands of the sort of people with a lot of power— and obsession— to go with it.” She shakes her head. “I was born in a world like that. They wanted to use me escape a plague that had taken over the planet, but, as I’m sure you’ve realized by now, not everyone can make use of our keys.”

“Was it zombies?” Ichigo asks, cocking his head. “I’ve been visiting a zombie apocalypse world, recently.”

“No, not zombies,” Mother says. “I believe it was demon in origin. The coming of Satan, that sort of thing.

“I’m a few thousand years old, give or take a century. I haven’t seen my home universe since I was two hundred and seventy-six years old, after they killed my husband and daughter.” Mother shifts in her chair. “I made a point of helping others in situations like mine since then, helping them navigate the right choice for their universe and every universe from there on in.”

Ichigo sits up carefully.

“I guess the Palace sent me here for a reason,” he says, sipping his hot chocolate. “Mind giving me a hand?”

“I’d be happy to help,” Mother says, smiling. “Why don’t you tell me—”

There’s the sound of a cabinet door creaking open, and when Ichigo turns to look, he sees a small, dark-haired boy with powder-green skin and and ruffled black hair tucked behind pointed ears peering guiltily at them from the darkness of the cabinet, caught in the act of eavesdropping.

“Sybok,” Mother says, tone exasperated as the boy crawls out of his hiding place. “You know better than to sneak around my office.”

“I was bored by my lessons,” the boy says, tone perfectly measured and void of any emotion despite his expression. “I thought you would play one of your Terran games with me.”

Immediately, Mother softens.

“Give me an hour, Sybok,” she says. “We can play Guess Who? or Trouble, if you like.”

Immediately the boy perks.

“Thank you, Mother,” Sybok says, voice even. Then, he turns on his heel and disappears into the hallway.

Mother waits a beat, then slumps, shaking her head as she chuckles.

“Children,” she says, smiling at Ichigo apologetically. “They’re the same in every species. I apologize.”

“No worries,” Ichigo says. “I get it.”

“I have a feeling you do. Now, why don’t you tell me what’s happened in your world. Someone recognized you?”

“Yeah. Well, see, when I was fifteen…”

*.*

Ichigo argues with her well into the night, until his eyes refuse to remain open and his tongue becomes clumsy in his mouth. Mother lets him sleep, calling for her husband to move him to the couch in her office before turning out the light and locking the door. For a solid fifteen hours, he’s dead to the world.

Then, he wakes up.

It’s an arduous process, waking up after a good crying jag, which what had eventually sapped what little energy Ichigo had left and put him down for the night. His eyes are crusted shut with salt, his hair is positively filthy, and the robe he’s wearing, borrowed from Mother’s husband’s wardrobe and just a touch too big, is rumpled and twisted around his body in one uncomfortable knot of green and gold sort-of-silk. Eventually, he realizes he can’t pull himself free without ripping it, and lets himself roll off the couch completely and onto the floor.

“Shit!”

“You’ve got a dirty mouth,” Mother remarks from behind her desk, not looking up from the tablet in her hands. “Late twentieth century Earth?”

“Early twenty-first,” Ichigo grunts, pushing himself to his feet and shaking out his clothes.

“If you’re hungry, there’s a replicator over there,” Mother says, pointing towards an approximation of a vending machine. “Only vegan options, though— Vulcans don’t eat meat, and their stomachs have trouble processing most dairy projects.”

Ichigo’s stomach probably couldn’t handle anything much hardier than a salad anyway. Besides that mug of hot chocolate the night before, he’s mostly been subsisting off of wine and whatever he’s been able to find in the conveniently placed fruit bowls the Palace provided for him whenever he’d been lucid enough to feel peckish.

“Tell it what you want,” Mother says. “It’s got forty thousand Human options.”

Ichigo thinks a moment, orders himself a caesar salad and a tall glass of water, then goes to sit at her desk, proceeding to demolish his meal in minutes.

“Thanks,” he says, setting aside the empty plate.

“Your welcome.” Mother looks up from her tablet, eyes sharp. “You’ve got questions.”

Ichigo doesn’t deny it.

“They’re more personal,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “And not relevant.”

“It’s all relevant,” Mother says, setting down her work. “You’ve got a big decision to make.”

Ichigo chews his lip thoughtfully for a moment, then relents.

“You… you’re going to have a family, here,” he says. “Is that normal? For you? For others like us?”

“For some,” Mother admits. “This is my first time, and it’ll be my last. I plan to die in this universe.” She gives him a small smile. “Keykeepers have a good deal, as far as immortality goes. We can stop the moment we get tired of it all, settle down and die like everyone else. No brooding over immortality or wishing for death— all you have to do is make a choice.”

Ichigo thinks about that.

“I’ve got a boyfriend,” he says, mouth twisting uncomfortably around the word. “In my home universe. He’s a Keykeeper, like me.”

Mother’s eyes widen momentarily in surprise.

“That’s very rare,” she says. “It isn’t often there’s more than one keeper to a world, and it happens even less that they’re born even remotely near the same time. You’re very fortunate.”

“He doesn’t know what it means, either,” Ichigo admits. “He doesn’t even really understand what the key is— he only got it after he came to the World of the Living.”

Mother shrugs.

“That’s not so unusual,” she says. “Most people inherit their keys later in life, though none of us are really sure why. The predominant theory is that it has something to do with the way our minds tackle problems— you have to be able to think a certain way in order to travel like we do.”

“Why can we travel at all?” Ichigo shakes his head. “There’s got to be a reason for it, right?”

“It depends on the keeper,” Mother says. “I made it my life’s work to help Keykeepers who must escape their home universes. There are others who like to play grand conqueror, and others who simply enjoy the experiences their keys open them to. It’s up to the keeper, really.”

Damn. Ichigo had really been hoping for a destiny of some kind, just to make things a touch clearer. A Purpose has always been very easy to absorb into his psyche.

“Right,” he says dully. “Great. So, with that in mind, I think I’ve got to go, now. Decisions to be made, boyfriends to educate in order to make those decisions… I’ve got a good time waiting for me. Oh!” Ichigo snaps his fingers. “And he’s on psychedelic drugs right now. Fantastic.”

“I suggest letting him sober up first at your Palace,” Mother says. “At least before you drop all this on his head.” She pauses, watching him thoughtfully. “When you do come to a decision, please, stop by and visit. I’d like to know how it all works out for you.”

Ichigo pushes himself to his feet and drops a deep bow.

“Of course, Mother,” he says. “Thanks for the hospitality, and the advice.”

Mother smiles at him.

“Do what you think is right,” she says, raising her hand in that strange gesture she’d used to greet him. “Live long and prosper, Ichigo.”

Oh. Oh. Ichigo’s in that universe.

“Uh… peace and long life?” Ichigo raises his hand in an attempt to mirror her, but his fingers won’t do what he asks, so after a moment he drops it again. “It was nice to meet you.”

“And you, Ichigo.”

Chapter Text

Kisuke is exactly where Ichigo left him when he comes flying through the doorway, still wearing Vulcan robes and disgusting from at least a few weeks without bathing. Kisuke’s startles badly when the door swings open, eyes widening in surprise and confusion when he sees Ichigo.

“How long has it been?” he asks as Ichigo reaches for his wrists.

“Only a moment, for you,” Ichigo says, pulling him to his feet. “Come on, up— we’ve got places to be.”

The Palace is a good idea, but it’s a lot, and Ichigo doesn’t know what it’ll do to Kisuke’s high. He needs someplace smaller, someplace safe, someplace where he can leave if it turns into an argument and he needs to cool off—

“Where are we going?” Kisuke asks as an idea forms in Ichigo’s head.

“I have a friend who’s very nice,” Ichigo says. “A man called Jesus. Would you like to meet him?”

“Do you like him?”

“I think so,” Ichigo says. “He seems like a nice guy, just like his namesake.”

“Oh.” Kisuke seems to think about this. “But you like me better, right?”

Ichigo plants a kiss on his forehead, wrapping a supportive hand around his waist.

“Of course, mon cher,” he says. “I think I might like you best of everyone I know.”

Kisuke goes pink, a dopey smile forming on his face.

“Thanks, Ichigo. I like you, too.”

“Happy to hear it,” Ichigo says. “Now let’s go.”

*.*

“He’s on acid,” Ichigo announces as he bursts through Jesus’ door, startling the man out of his seat. “I need somewhere to store him until it wears off. Can I borrow your trailer?”

“Yeah, of course— acid?” Jesus repeats incredulously as Ichigo brushes past him to dump Kisuke on the small pull out couch. “Around here?”

“He’s like me,” Ichigo says. “Figured some stuff out recently, and, well— this is my boyfriend, Kisuke. Kisuke, this is Jesus. Say hello.”

“Hi, Jesus,” Kisuke says obediently, eyes rolling strangely as he tries to focus on Jesus’s face. “Nice t’meet you.”

Ichigo feels a small, indulgent smile curve his mouth. Kisuke’s adorable like this, wide-eyed and soft as he marvels at the colors swirling around him.

“Me ‘n’ Jesus are going to go talk for a second,” he says, leaning down to press a kiss to Kisuke’s limp hand. “And then I’m going to come back and sit with you until it’s over. Okay?”

“Okay,” Kisuke says, letting himself slump against the dingy cushions. “But come back soon.”

“I will,” Ichigo promises. “Stay right here.”

Straightening, he turns to look at Jesus.

“Care for a stroll around the park?”

*.*

“That’s going to be a rough conversation.”

Ichigo laughs around his cigarette.

“I don’t even know how much he knows, man,” he says. “About all this Keeper stuff. I mean, he usually plays his cards pretty close to his chest, so there’s no guarantee he’d say anything about it, but… I don’t know, man.” Ichigo rubs a hand over his face. “I like to think we’ve gotten better at the whole communication thing.”

Jesus nods thoughtfully, arms crossed across his chest.

“Well, you won’t know until you talk to him,” he says practically. “How much longer do you think he’s got?”

“A couple of hours, at least.” Ichigo sighs. “This is some pretty shitty timing, all around.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Ichigo. It could be worse.” Jesus arches an eyebrow, giving Ichigo a small smile. “It could be raining.”

Ichigo rolls his eyes.

“Whatever, asshole,” he says, not quite managing to keep his lips from turning upward. “Laugh it up while you can— I doubt he’ll get pissed, but he’s a scientist, first and foremost. He’s going to ask questions I can’t answer, and that’s going to frustrate him.”

“Well, what about that lady you were telling me about? Mother?” Jesus cocks his head. “Once you get the basics hammered out, why don’t you take him to visit her? She’ll probably be able to explain a few things. And you said you’ve got that library, too.”

Ichigo sighs.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “I’m probably blowing it all out of proportion. But— I’ve never actually told anyone from my own world about this stuff before, Jesus. It’s… different.”

“Just regular coming out jitters,” Jesus promises. “Everyone gets those some way or another. Being different can be hard, and you love this guy. Right?”

“... I don’t know about that, yet. I mean, I love him, obviously, but I don’t know if it’s… y’know. Full-blown boyfriend love.”

Jesus gives him a look, and Ichigo flushes.

“I don’t know about you, man, but you’re asking him to run away and explore strange universes with you for the rest of eternity,” he says, shifting his weight onto one leg. “Which he doesn’t specifically have to do. That makes me think he’s pretty important.”

He is. Of course Kisuke is. He’s the only one who even made an attempt to talk to Ichigo after everything fell to shit. He was the one who went and arranged for Ichigo to get his powers back. Hell, he’s the one who helped Ichigo with his powers in the first place— though granted, he did something of a slapdash job, that first time around.

Besides that, though… Ichigo’s gotten used to being able to slip into whichever language he feels like without worrying about being understood. He’s gotten used to arguments about television shows and long-winded explanations of articles he doesn’t particularly know anything about from science journals he’ll never read. He’s gotten used to warmth in his bed and the smell of that weirdly flowery shampoo that Kisuke likes so much, and…

“Well,” Ichigo says. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” Jesus agrees. “Go sit with your boyfriend, man. You’ve got all the time in the world, at least for today.”

Ichigo runs a hand through his hair tiredly.

“Yeah. I’ll go do that.”

“And maybe have a shower, too,” Jesus adds, grinning at him. “No offense, man, but you need it.”

“Fuck you.”

*.*

Kisuke wakes up warm, which usually is the first sign of a good morning. When he opens his eyes, he sees a nest of orange hair buried in his neck— another good sign— and the unfamiliar, wooden panel interior of a room he’s never seen before.

It takes him a moment to remember— Ichigo had wanted to introduce him to a friend, a friend who turned out to be a bearded white man with an American accent and a ragged edge to his style called Jesus. He has no memory of how they got to the man’s house, but Ichigo had only used English once they got there, disappearing with the man for who knows how long before returning and coaxing Kisuke into a chair while he unfolded the pull-out couch he’d been sitting on before.

Groaning, he shifts slightly, wriggling an arm free to reach up and run his fingers through Ichigo’s hair. Ichigo sighs softly under the touch, muscles tensing and relaxing as a shiver runs up his spine and he wakes up.

“Did you sleep?” he asks, words muffled by the fabric of Kisuke’s shirt.

“Some.” Kisuke twists an orange lock between his fingers. “Where’s your friend?”

Ichigo hums, twisting until he can look Kisuke in the eye.

“He gave us some privacy,” Ichigo says, reaching up to tangle his fingers in the silver chain of Kisuke’s necklace. “I told him we’ve got a few things to talk about— he was generous enough to let me borrow his trailer.”

Kisuke smiles slightly, moving to press a kiss to Ichigo’s forehead.

“Stuff we couldn’t talk about in the apartment?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

Kisuke frowns at his tone, sitting up to meet Ichigo’s gaze properly.

“Ichigo, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Ichigo says, but he’s lying, isn’t he? His words don’t match the worry that twists his mouth into a frown. “It’s just… big.” He tugs on Kisuke’s necklace. “Very big.”

Kisuke sighs and leans down to kiss him again.

“You can talk to me about anything, Ichigo,” he promises. “You know that.”

Ichigo sighs.

“It’s… about the keys.”

“What keys?”

“Our keys.” Ichigo pulls at the chain pointedly. “And what they mean to the universe.”

Kisuke blinks.

“You’re going to need to explain that sentence,” he says.

Ichigo purses his lips together, then sits up.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “I am.”

Chapter Text

“This is… fascinating,” Kisuke says finally. He’d gone very quiet while Ichigo explained, expression carefully impassive as Ichigo talks about moving between worlds, about the fabric of the universe and its place in the endless quilt of life, about time and space and possibilities that stretch on for forever. It’s been a half hour since Ichigo finished, and there’s been silence ever since— until now, at least.

“Fascinating,” Ichigo repeats. “Which is good.”

“... It’s very good,” Kisuke agrees slowly. “I’m sorry, I— I have a great many questions that need answering, and I’m not sure which to ask first.”

“I can’t answer most of them,” Ichigo says, apologetic. “I only just sort of figured everything out, and that was with help.”

“Help?”

“Books,” Ichigo says. “I have a library that holds every book in the multiverse.”

“You’ve been holding out on me.”

“I’m sure I told you about it,” Ichigo says. “I’ve never really lied about the whole…” he waves a hand in an all-encompassing gesture. “This.”

He runs a hand through his hair.

“Besides the Palace, I mean…” Ichigo trails off. “I also met with somebody like us.”

“Another?” Kisuke asks. “How many Keykeepers are there?”

“Probably as many as there are universes.” Ichigo shrugs. “I think you’ve just got to assume general limitlessness from now on— at least, once you get over a short stint of insanity.” His had lasted six months, before he’d gone to collect Kisuke. Considering the man’s genius, he’d probably be fine after a few weeks. He’s always been good at big, all-encompassing concepts like that.

Kisuke hums thoughtfully.

“The concept of a multiverse, at least, I’m familiar with,” he says, fiddling with the key around his neck. “But I’m a bit embarrassed not to have noticed the full extent of the key’s abilities before.” He shakes his head, huffing a laugh. “All this time I’ve been carrying a key to the universe, and I’ve been using its powers for storage.”

“To be fair, I thought that just be what your key did,” Ichigo says. “I didn’t know the universes were real until you gave me Jinta’s comic books.”

“Still.”

Ichigo rolls his eyes.

“Mother said every person’s key works differently for them,” he says. “All we’ve got to figure out is how your key works, and then you’ll be able to use it for storage and traveling the multiverse.”

“I’d like to meet Mother, if you don’t mind,” Kisuke says. “Before we go back.”

“... Kisuke,” Ichigo says gently. “We aren’t going to be able to go back.”

“And why not?” he asks. “You killed the only man who knew. The Seireitei might kill happy, but really, what are they going to do?” Kisuke arches an eyebrow. “All we have to do is… open a door.”

“We can’t kill them all, Kisuke,” Ichigo says. “And I don’t want to. I want my sisters safe.”

“Give me a little time,” Kisuke says. “I’ll figure something out, I promise.” He pushes himself to his feet, tugging at the hem of a shirt borrowed from Jesus’ wardrobe. “Where are we now?”

“In the Walking Dead universe.” Ichigo sits back against the wall. “I found it before you gave me Jinta’s books— that’s what clued me in that these places were… actually real.”

Ichigo makes a face when he says it.

“Well, I don’t know anything about this world, comic books or otherwise.” Kisuke smiles at him. “So if it’s alright with you, I’d like a tour of the place. Would you do me the honor?”

Kisuke holds out an arm, and after a moment, Ichigo begins to smile.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, getting to his feet. “Fair warning, though— this is an apocalypse universe, so the smells can be…”

“I’ve had worse, I’m sure.” Kisuke links their arms together, tangling their fingers and squeezing. “Come on. Show me the sights.”

Ichigo looks at him then, really looks at him, and realizes that— yeah, no, he’s definitely attached to that silly smile and that careful, hopeful gaze. He finds himself smiling despite himself, leaning forward to press his lips to Kisuke’s.

“Yeah,” he says, not so much pulling away as tilting his mouth to rest on Kisuke’s cheek instead. “... I think we can do that.”

*.*

“The best explanation I’ve ever been given for our existence is something I’ve since dubbed House Theory.”

Time has passed, in Mother’s universe. Her pregnancy belly is gone and in place there is a child, perhaps two years old and pudgy where he sits on her lap, a stuffed walrus clutched in his fat fists. His gaze is wide-eyed and owlish as he looks between Kisuke and Ichigo, like perhaps he’s never seen people like them before.

“Think of the multiverse as a grand house,” Mother says. “And in every room, there is a universe. Some rooms are very similar— the master of the house doesn’t believe in updating the fashion of every room, you see, and instead has a new room built to reflect the updates made on the original room. This will happen an infinite amount of times in an infinite amount of ways.

“On occasion, a completely new room will be built by a guest in one of the old rooms,” she continues, sipping her tea absently. “And then a million more in the same likeness as that single, new room. These rooms are also endless.”

“Who are we, in this metaphor?” Kisuke asks, tilting his head curiously.

“We’re the servants of the house.” Mother smiles. “We have access to the servants’ stairs, able to move between each room without being noticed, fixing and cleaning and reworking each room to fit what we think best. We haven’t been given orders on how to fix each room to the master’s liking, so each of us employs a different technique to each room we visit.” She sighs. “For many centuries, I worked with a man who enjoyed revolutions. He was incredibly successful, instigating riots and coups and whatever political uprisings he felt necessary to bring each universe on track. I’m not so sure, myself— but then, every Keykeeper has a different idea of what ‘fixing’ means, and it’s up to us as individuals to decide our goals— in his case, it was justice.”

“So there’s no mission,” Kisuke says. “No great purpose.”

“It’s very rare anyone is born with purpose,” Mother says. “No matter how great the individual’s power.” She sighs. “No, no— like all other mortals, we must muddle through it all ourselves, and hope we don’t go mad in the process. There is some comfort in that, I suppose— not everyone can cope with actually being important.”

She looks at Kisuke then, her eyes kind.

“I think you both ought to go home and let everything settle,” she says. “The Palace is a wonderful place to sit and think, if Ichigo’s descriptions of the place are to be believed. Go home, think it over, and when you think you’re ready, come back to me.”

“I’m ready,” Kisuke says.

“The moment you leave this room you’re either going to burst into tears or faint,” Mother says flatly, arching an eyebrow. “And that’s if you’re lucky.”

“She’s got a point,” Ichigo murmurs. “I sort of lost it, after she explained things to me the first time.”

Kisuke looks between them both, and Ichigo can see the war in his eyes between panic and determination. It’s time to cut this conversation short.

“It’s time to leave,” Ichigo says, nodding sharply as he moves to his feet. “Thanks for having us, Mother— you’re a good teacher.”

“Thank you, Ichigo,” she says. “Spock, say goodbye to Mr. Urahara and Mr. Kurosaki.”

The child stares a moment, then raises his hand, fingers parting clumsily in a strange salute.

“Bye.”

“Bye, Spock,” Ichigo says, grinning. “Kisuke?”

Kisuke’s still staring at the baby, an odd look on his face. Then, he shakes himself.

“Yes, sorry.” He clears his throat, then raises his hand to mimic the boy’s gesture. “Live long and prosper, Mr. Spock. Lady Amanda.”

And as Amanda’s eyes go wide, Kisuke turns to Ichigo, catching his hand with his.

“Show me the Palace,” he says. “Before I go into fits.”

“You won’t go into fits,” Ichigo says. “Probably.”

“Well, either way, I think we’re done here, for now.” Kisuke squeezes Ichigo’s hand, and it’s just a touch too tight as panic begins to crash over him. “Shall we?”

Ichigo thinks he’s going to be spending a few months in the Palace again as Kisuke tears through the library. Well… it’ll be nice to have company, for once.

“Yeah,” Ichigo agrees, bumping his shoulder against Kisuke’s affectionately. “Let’s go.”