Title: What Goes Up
Fandom: Bleach.
Rating: T.
Length: 6.7k.
Content notes: Warnings for mildly graphic descriptions of medical operating, for both canon and non-canon character deaths, and for trauma related to falling.
Author notes: Written for Challenge #86, 'Health and Fitness', as well as the 'Taking Care of Someone' square for my hc_bingo card. Oh, so excited! It's my first time playing H/C Bingo! XD (And I do so love torturing my characters.)
Summary: The war against the Vandenreich has been won, but not without some severe costs. The Seireitei is in ruins, hundreds of shinigami have been wiped out, and almost every captain and vice-captain is injured in one way or another. But the real cost of the war is one dying boy, lying in shattered ruins on a bed. - Canon divergent (I assume) past current events of the manga. No pairing, characters are Shuuhei and Ichigo.


The aftermath of the Vandenreich attack is a mess. Most of the captains, and nearly all of the vice-captains, end up badly injured. The twelfth was nearly wiped out, with the exception of a few seated officers, and what members of their division weren't there when the attack hit. The list of injuries rises scarily fast, and the list of casualties even faster.

Most are unseated, the rank and file soldiers of the divisions. Wiped out by the dozens by the swords of the Vandenreich, or caught in the areas of their superior's battles. Most of the Seireitei has been reduced to rubble, and the massive trenches left behind by redirected blasts of reiatsu. The casualty list for the higher ranks is surprisingly, thankfully, small, but those few names on the list are still massive blows.

However, as always, the Seireitei will rebuild. The attack is done, the enemy defeated, and we still survive. There will be confusion, mourning, disorganization, but we will recover.

The first time I see the true cost of the war, it's an accident.

The first day past the final battle, the clash of titans that raged far above all our heads, is filled with searching. Trying to match the list of missing to corpses, or to injured survivors. The entire world is blood, rubble, and screams. It's enough to make even my battle-hardened stomach turn. Death isn't anything new to me, it's what I deal in, live in, but this level of slaughter is nothing I've faced before. The cast on my right arm - broken - and the bandages wrapped around my upper ribs - a gouge on the left side of my torso, now stitched close - make it harder, but mostly I'm there for show. My wounds are more minor than most of the other vice-captains, and captains, and I'm one of the few who can still move and help without much trouble. I'm there to reassure the living shinigami that not everything has been destroyed, that at least some of their leaders are still standing.

I'm escorting another group to the fourth, a dozen injured and laid out on stretchers, and ask for Isane. With Unohana gone, she's the acting captain of her division, and that's a post I'm all too familiar with. The fourth - what's still standing - is a madhouse of activity. I stick to the walls, out of the way of the medics rushing back and forth, and slowly make my way to the room that the distracted division member directed me to.

I step inside, past the hanging cloth that serves as a door - the actual door lying, cracked nearly in half, against the opposite wall - and for a moment all I see is Isane's back, leaning over a bed.

"Isane," I greet, and she whips around.

Her grey eyes are wide, a clipboard clutched tight to her chest. "S-Shuuhei," she answers, in a rushed voice. "What can I do for you?" Despite her best efforts, and her careful positioning between me and the patient on the bed, I still catche a flash of orange as she moves.

"I've got another dozen for you, dropped them off at the front. Is that Kurosaki?" She winces.

The boy hero, Kurosaki, had been the one to finally fight Bach. After taking out four of the Vandenreich soldiers on his own, and then following that impressive feat up with taking out both of Bach's lieutenants, he'd gone toe to toe with their leader. It happened miles and miles into the air, high past where any of us could see what was happening, and most of the Seireitei had been too busy in our search for survivors, at that point, to pay close attention anyway. I know that Kurosaki won, the lack of all of our deaths is pretty definite proof, but I'd never really considered what had happened to the boy.

"Keep your voice down," she says softly, beckoning me closer with one hand, "this needs to stay quiet."

I move towards her, and she steps aside to give me a clear view of the young hero. He's covered up to his collarbone in one of the thick blankets the fourth uses, arms lying on top of it. There's several IVs hooked into his left arm - the right covered in a cast near identical to the one on mine - as well as tubes hooked into his nose and down his throat. What skin isn't covered by blanket or bandages is pale, waxy. He looks like he's at death's door.

"What happened?" I ask quietly, following it immediately with, "Will he be alright?"

Her eyes are sad, and she shakes her head. "I don't know. I'm not Unohana, I can't do what she could. Most of his injuries seem to be from the fight, but some look like they were caused by a fall. We found him a distance from the edges of Seireitei, in a crater, not far from Bach. I think what happened, is that he killed Bach, but lost consciousness shortly afterwards. Whatever height they were at, he fell the distance. He," she pauses to take a breath, eyes closing for a moment. "He was barely breathing when we found him, and he stopped three separate times on the way back. I kept him alive, but..."

"There's no guarantee," I finish for her, and she nods.

"Captain Commander Kyouraku gave orders for this to stay quiet," she continues, after a moment. "He thinks if word got out that Kurosaki is in such bad shape, moral will plummet. We need everything we can get right now."

"He's probably right," I admit. "What about that girl he's friends with, the one who can heal?"

"No word. We don't know what happened, and we can't make any kind of contact with Hueco Mundo. You know there's not anyone available for a search there."

In a disconnected way, I can manage a bit of sadness for that. I never knew the girl, had only seen and heard of her, but I know all about her talents. I might not be able to really mourn for her theoretical fate - not with how busy I am, how many lives I'm responsible for, and how many I'm worried might not make it through - but I can at least mourn the loss of her healing abilities. Those would have been very, very useful in our current situation.

"His hollow is gone too," she comments, eyes falling to her clipboard. "It's unclear how, but every bit of hollow reiatsu is gone from him, though his shinigami and quincy powers remain. If those didn't exist... The injuries he was found with are deep, and his quincy abilities are stopping him from bleeding out, even now. If he was any less powerful, he'd be dead."

"What's the intention once he wakes up? Well, if. You won't be able to hide this from anyone once he's moving around, not with the ruins most of Seireitei is in."

She gives a soft laugh, that almost sounds just a bit hysteria induced. "I don't think anyone's thought that far ahead."

Yeah, fair enough. Right now, everything is just reactions. Any long term planning has fallen by the wayside in favor of immediate fixes. We need to get up and functional again as soon as possible. For the moment, hiding a patient behind a cloth door is probably the best anyone can manage. In a week, or a month, we'll start actually rebuilding, and not just putting up ramshackle tents for more space to put the injured.

I nod, and offer Isane a bow of my head. "I'll keep it to myself, let me know if there's anything I can do. I've got more digging to get back to."

She gives me a grateful smile. "I will, thank you."

I take one last look at Kurosaki before turning and leaving the room, letting the cloth shut behind me. In that room is the true cost of this war. Not the hundreds dead, or injured, but one dying boy pushed into a fight he probably barely survived. What does it say about all of us that we let a seventeen year old human child lead us into a war? That we let the boy fight not one, but two enemies - that by all rights should have killed him - all by himself? Surely there was another way, someone else who could have led the charge. There had to be something we could have done, so it didn't have to be the same hero we'd already made sacrifice. Why couldn't we let the boy stay human, why did we have to involve him?

---------------------------------------

The help I offered gets called in almost four weeks later. We haven't quite started rebuilding yet, but we are well on our way to clearing out all the rubble. The wasteland that used to be the first division is now a storage area for the piles of different materials, for eventual use in the reconstruction of the divisions. A few barracks are still - mostly - standing, and for the time being everyone is either housed in those, or in ramshackle huts thrown together in the more stable areas of the ruins.

But every shinigami that heals enough to be allowed out of the fourth's field of tents is another set of hands, so every day that passes our work goes faster, easier. It almost feels like the entirety of the Seireitei has become one large division, the captains ruling and the vice-captains playing the roles of the seated officers.

When the summons comes, I'm on one of the lighter shifts. I'm supervising the flood of materials to the stacks, making sure that everything gets shuffled to the right areas. The shift of actual work, before this and lunch, had been exhausting, so I'm grateful for the chance to do nothing more than stand, yell, and point.

The shinigami that comes skidding to a stop in the dirt next to me is fourth division, medical gloves still pulled high and specked with spots of blood. The panic in his eyes is easily visible. "Hisagi fuku-taichou!" the young man gasps out, legs wavering and barely holding him. "Kotetsu-taichou sent me, she needs you!"

"Same room?" I demand, and the medic nods. I take off without further prompting, digging into my store of reiatsu - depleted from the work, and from healing the last of my injuries, but enough to get me there - to use shunpo. The fourth is easy to locate now, the only place looking almost clean, and after a brief moment of searching I find the only room with a protective layer of kidou over it. That must be it.

When I land in front of it, and see the small collection of unconscious or panting medics in front of the door - an actual door, now - it confirms my suspicions. One spots me and flaps a hand at the door, other hand pressed against her chest. "Inside," she gasps.

I move through them and to the door, opening it and slipping inside. I can feel the kidou pass over my skin - tingling but not halting my entry - and the moment I'm fully through it a wave of reiatsu hits me like a blow to the chest. I stagger, my weight closing the door behind me as I fall against it, and look up to see Isane standing over the bed, holding a thrashing Kurosaki down by his upper arms. It's like moving through molasses, but I manage to cross the room to stand next to her. She's sweating, barely managing to hold the young man down, and it's probably only due to the still present injuries that she's doing even this much. The press of the reiatsu is suffocating, leaving Kurosaki in waves that slam into me with enough force to drive the air out of my lungs each time.

His brown eyes are wide, glowing with a silvery blue power, but glazed and fevered. The cast on my arm is gone, a clean bill of health, but the younger man's is still in place. His left leg, along the curve of his knee, is laid open to the bones, and the discarded tools and pins holding the skin and muscle away speak to the operation that was clearly abandoned midway through.

Isane notices me the moment I'm beside her, and the grey eyes she turns on me are narrowed and determined. "Hold him down," she orders sharply, and I circle her to take her place, wrapping my hands around Kurosaki's biceps and pinning him down to the bed. I do it with a little more success than her, but that's just the differences in our respective strengths. I'm physically oriented, and she's a healer. She releases her grip, and I don't have time for much more than a startled blink as she deftly unties and strips my obi off of me.

Her steps are quick and sure, like the reiatsu isn't pressing down on her, and she takes the white piece of cloth and ties one end around Kurosaki's left ankle, hooking it through and then tying it to the metal slats at the end of the bed. She repeats the process with her own obi, around his right ankle, tying him down to the bed, and although the metal creaks it does hold.

"What the hell happened?" I ask in a strained voice, leaning almost all of my weight down onto the younger man to hold him in place. It's beyond impressive how much strength Kurosaki is demonstrating, considering that even the injuries I know about - which can't be all of them - would have crippled me or pretty much anyone else.

Isane steps up to his leg, grabbing several of the discarded tools and setting to work, gloves covering most of her arms. "It's the first time Kurosaki was stable enough for us to operate on anything," she explains, and I have to look away as she digs into the young man's leg. "His right leg is broken in four places, and it looks like Bach drove a sword through this knee. Everything else should heal with some minor work and a lot of time, but this needed to be surgically fixed or he'd never have been able to walk again. He woke up in the middle of our work."

Kurosaki gives a sharp cry of pain, jerking sharply under my hands, but his eyes don't clear any.

"Don't you drug patients precisely to keep them from waking up?" I demand, groaning under another wave of power.

"It was a mistake," she says in a gasp. "His quincy powers, they've been the driving force of his healing. The blut has been stopping him from bleeding, it even stopped him from bleeding any more than the first few seconds of splitting his leg open. I think it also froze the medications in his system, they weren't absorbed properly. That, or his reiatsu burned it out of him. That sometimes happens with high powered patients. Either way, they're not working." My grip tightens on Kurosaki's arms as he gives a choked noise, head tossing to one side.

"Yeah," I manage, "that's an understatement."

"Just keep him down!"

After a while, Kurosaki's struggles fade. He doesn't stop twitching, his chest rising in heaving breaths, but he stops thrashing and fighting my hold. His head is turned against the bed, eyes half-lidded and glazed, but still glowing with blue power. Quincy power. The reiatsu pressing against us lessens some, easing the struggle to breathe, and Isane's work continues. I risk a few glances down, but each time the sight of the bared muscle and bone is more than enough to get me to turn away again. Kurosaki is pale, long strands of sweat soaked orange hair clinging to his skin, but even his clear unhealthiness is an easier sight to bear.

Eventually Isane sighs, and announces, "Alright, I'm done." I look down at her, and at the freshly wrapped and splinted leg. There's a little bit of blood on her discarded gloves, but not nearly the amount that should be there. Proof of the effects of Kurosaki's power. "You can let him go," she informs me, and I do. My hands come away stiff, cramped from holding the powerful young man down for so long, and I get to see the bruises on Kurosaki's skin where my grip was. I wince, but throw away the guilt. Better a few bruises than crippled from an operation that had to be halted in the middle.

"Do you need anything else?" I ask, dragging my gaze away from Kurosaki's glazed eyes.

"Actually, yes. Would you stay here with him? Kyouraku-taichou asked me to retrieve him as soon as Kurosaki woke." She sighs again, wiping one arm over her forehead. "This is close enough to count."

"Of course, yeah. I'll stay."

She nods her thanks. "I'll be right back." She heads for the door, opening it just enough to slip through the crack, and it closes with a quiet click.

I stretch my arms, popping my knuckles with a series of delightful cracks and a relieved breath. I carefully take a seat next to Kurosaki on the bed, letting my back curve forward as I rest my arms on my knees, closing my eyes. Adrenaline is a marvelous thing, but the crash afterwards isn't something to be envious of. I could use a couple hours of sleep after this insanity.

I take a moment to wonder who took over for my abrupt departure from the material piles, if anyone did. It's not something I could have done any other way, so there's no sense in worrying over it, but I do hope that everything went alright after I left. There's pretty much nothing that supersedes a direct order from the fourth division, so it's not like anyone will fault me for abandoning my post. No one with any sense of intelligence, anyway.

Kurosaki's breath hitches, and I turn to look at him. To my surprise, brown eyes meet my gaze - still faintly glowing blue, but dominantly their natural color - and fix on my face. "Kurosaki?" I ask, and his gaze slides over me and out to the room for a moment before returning.

"Where, am I?" he asks, in a voice that's rusty and cracking.

"The fourth," I answer, carefully turning to face him. He winces, I assume at the slight jostling, and I all but freeze.

"Bach?" he questions, after a few moments.

"Dead. Do you remember your fight with him?"

The young man winces again, a faint tremble shaking his shoulders. "Some of it, yeah."

"Isane says you defeated him, then must have blacked out and fallen to the earth, where they found you both."

The door opens, and I turn my head towards the sound. Isane enters first, followed immediately by Kyouraku, and she freezes the moment she looks up and sees the both of us. She rushes forward after a moment of shock, as Kyouraku closes the door behind them, and I slide off the bed to make room for her, trying to move the bed as little as possible. She leans down over the young man, and I cross the room.

"Kyouraku-taichou," I greet softly, and he gives me a soft smile and a nod. The eyepatch covering his right eye, the scar across his temple, and the missing top half of his ear are still jarring, even though it's been a little over a month since the wound was received. I don't see our new Captain Commander enough to have gotten used to the change in his appearance.

"Hisagi fuku-taichou, good to see you fully recovered. How's Kensei?"

My captain had been one of the worst injured, almost up there with the captain of the sixth, Kuchiki. "Still with the fourth," I answer quietly, "but getting more obstinate every day." While the fourth is capable of keeping anyone as a patient, some are less appreciative than others. Kensei does not enjoy being confined to a bed in the slightest, even though he's not healed enough yet to leave. He's grumpier every time I see him, and given that my captain was already pretty grumpy, that's saying something.

Kyouraku gives a soft chuckle. "Yes, that sounds right. I'll stop by and see him next time I have a moment, see if I can convince him to be kind to the medics, hm?"

"I'm sure they'd appreciate that, sir. Is there anything else I can do here? I left my station kind of suddenly, and they could probably use me back there."

"As a matter of fact, Hisagi, there is." The new Captain Commander's voice is quiet, pitched to reach only my ears, and he gives me another smile. "Now that he's conscious, Kurosaki should be just fine with some time and work. However, according to Kotetsu, he will need to undergo extensive physical therapy. This can't be done publicly, the story given to everyone but his family and friends is that he went home to Karakura after defeating Bach. We don't yet know if Kurosaki's new level of power is enough to affect the human world, so the therapy will have to be done here. Kotetsu and I would like you to do it."

I stare at him for a moment, blinking, and wondering if I somehow managed to completely mishear him. "Me, sir?" I ask in disbelief.

"Yes," he answers easily.

"I'm not trained, sir," I protest, "and I've barely even met Kurosaki. Wouldn't he prefer someone he knows?"

Kyouraku's lips tilt in a small smile, and he gives a small shrug. "Unfortunately, you've seen the complications about that already. This is Kurosaki when he's severely weakened, can you imagine what might have happened if he were at full strength? We need someone at least on the level of a lower captain that can survive that." My mind grinds to a halt for a few moments.

A captain? I was acting captain for quite awhile, after Tousen's defection, but I never gained a bankai or was officially given the post. I might have taken the first steps towards a bankai now, but it will likely be years more before I get close to it. My captain, Kensei, is absurdly more powerful than I am, and even Mashiro - who shares my rank of vice-captain - is far above me. They might be enhanced, vizards, but that doesn't change the fact that they're stronger, and better, than me even when they aren't using hollow powers. I'm nowhere near a captain.

"I'm not a captain," I say slowly, unable to help the look on my face as I watch Kyouraku, and he smiles.

"Kensei assures me that you're well on your way," he says softly, and any kind of answer I might have devised flies out of my mind. "You can't measure yourself against the captains we have now, Hisagi. Every captain we currently have is on the high end of the scale, Aizen's war, and now this, made sure of that. You are closest in power to, perhaps, Soi Fon or Kurotsuchi, they are simply well settled into their respective bankai, and you haven't discovered yours yet. You'll make captain someday, Hisagi." He winks at me, which I almost miss as a simple blink thanks to his missing eye, and bows his head an inch or so. "I know it, and so does Kensei."

That's one hell of an endorsement. The Captain Commander's faith is one thing, but Kensei, my own captain? The man I've considered my idol since I was just a child? That's enough to leave me just a little shell shocked.

"Which actually, brings me around to the second reason you're our best choice. I have no idea if Kurosaki would prefer someone he knows - though Kotetsu assures me that actually, usually, it's difficult for more powerful shinigami like Kurosaki to have friends see them in such a weakened condition - but the only close friends he has with that level of power are needed at their posts. We still haven't heard from Urahara Kisuke, in Hueco Mundo, or anyone that was with him, and with captain Kuchiki's injuries, Abarai is needed as the sixth's vice-captain. Kensei should be able to resume his duties, at least on a superficial capacity, before too much longer, and the ninth is the only division with two vice-captains. In the kindest terms possible, you're the only person with enough power that's currently expendable."

I suppose that would be insulting to a lot of people, but I can see the reasoning behind it. With the divisions that are still lacking captains, or vice-captains, whether by death or injury, a division with two vice-captains is something that really shouldn't exist. Mashiro and I have been sharing the weight of the division, and as soon as Kensei is up again we'll probably be the most recovered of all the divisions. We got off lighter than most in terms of the death rate of our members.

"Also," Kyouraku continues softly, with what almost seems like a conspiratorial smile, "Kotetsu and I agree that you are rather well-suited for the task."

"Sir?" I ask, mildly confused, and he gives a quiet laugh.

"We all know Kurosaki has a temper, Hisagi. I don't doubt his determination, or his strength, but it is likely he will be frustrated. It will probably require someone of extreme patience, someone who will not give up, or let him give up, regardless of what happens." Oh. "You have a reputation for being somewhat like that."

Well, I suppose, given all the variables, I am the best choice. I am aware of my reputation for being steadfast, hardworking, patient, and reliable, and I can't claim that any of those are purely created by word of mouth. I let myself sigh, raking one hand through my hair.

"Yes, that's true." Kyouraku watches me for several long moments, sighing, as I let my hand rest on the back of my neck. "Alright, sir. If he accepts, I'll do it."

He gives a small grin, and a nod. "Good, thank you Hisagi. Kurosaki will need to heal before any of this can happen, so there's no need to worry about it now. Kotetsu will handle the details, and Kensei will be informed of the reason for your absence. Go back to your division, we'll keep you appraised."

"Thank you, Kyouraku-taichou." I give a shallow bow, and with a glance at Isane - now sitting next to Kurosaki, though still speaking - head outside. The door shuts behind me, and I sigh.

Oh, what have I gotten myself into?

--------------------------------------

Kensei gets out of the fourth two weeks later, and it's about a month and a half before the Captain Commander, and Isane, tell me that they're ready, and Kurosaki agreed to my helping him through therapy.

They set us up in, of all places, one of the lower levels of the prison beneath the first. Since it's underground, it's one of the few places still entirely intact, and it's guaranteed privacy. The lower levels are mostly abandoned - with the exception of the lowest, which houses Aizen - and empty, though they have been maintained, just in case. Kurosaki, in a wheelchair, takes one look at the cleared stone dining area, and the side room outfitted to be a decently hospitable and comfortable bedroom for the two of us, and his jaw tightens.

"This'll be fun," he remarks sourly.

He looks better now. They haven't cut his hair, but the slightly longer look suits him. His skin is still pale, but more in a 'doesn't see the sun' way, than a 'on the verge of death' way, and his eyes are clear and no longer faintly glowing blue. Whatever injuries he had, I have to assume they're healed, since his quincy powers are no longer protecting him. Now, it's just a lack of muscle that needs to be fixed, and that's only going to be accomplished with a whole lot of pain and work. He stays quiet as the members of the fourth bring in sacks of rice and various other cooking implements, as well as a variety of supplies.

Kotetsu approaches, giving both of us a small smile. "If you need anything, just inform someone. Kitchen," she turns, pointing to each place as she names it, "your room, bathroom and shower area, and of course this is your dining area and exercise yard." She looks down at Kurosaki, bowing her head a few inches. "Good luck, Kurosaki, and thank you for everything you've done."

He waits until everyone is gone, arms crossed over his chest, before looking up at me. His brown eyes are narrowed, determined, but also hesitant, and nervous. It reminds me, sharply, that he's just a kid. "Mine as well get started, huh?" he asks gruffly, and I nod, offering him a hand.

-------------------

He has nightmares.

I got caught by surprise the first time, jerked out of sleep by a wave of reiatsu strong enough to knock the air out of my lungs, but after that it's easier. It's not every night, or every time he falls asleep, but they're regular. Every few nights he has one, and he wakes jerking and gasping. After the fifth time, he catches my gaze when he comes fully awake. Usually he turns and goes back to sleep, eventually, but this time he looks over and catches the fact that I'm awake. I can barely see his face in the darkness, but he freezes when his head turns my direction.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I ask, after a few minutes of silence between us.

"No," he says sharply, after a few more moments.

I nod, though I doubt that he can really make out the movement. "Alright," I concede. I lay back down, closing my eyes, and after a few minutes I hear him do the same.

It's almost two weeks later that he says anything more on the subject. After one of our daily exercise sessions - filled with curses, sweat, and pain, as usual - when he steps towards me to get to the chairs around the table, his left leg buckles beneath him. His eyes go wide, and I jump forward to catch him. I manage it, grabbing him by the upper arms and roughly stopping his fall, pulling him back up to standing.

"You alright?" I ask, and his gaze slowly lifts to mine. His pupils are pinpricks in the brown of his irises, his breath coming in short, sharp, gasps that I recognize as the beginnings of hyperventilation. Something happened, something he's remembering, and it's terrifying him. "Shit," I murmur, stepping forward to wrap my arms around him and keep him up. He's shorter than I am, though not by too much, and I hold him with one arm around his waist and the other cupping the back of his skull. He's stiff and trembling, and doesn't relax any under my grip.

"It's alright," I whisper into his hair, holding his head against my chest. "It's alright."

He doesn't get any better, but he doesn't get any worse either. At least that's something.

I don't know how long we stand there, but eventually, as if whatever it is has let him go, he suddenly eases into my arms. He gives a soft, shuddering noise, head pressing into my collarbone, and I lightly comb through his hair with the hand on his head. His hands grab fistfuls of my uniform, and he doesn't cry, he just shakes.

When he eventually stops, breathing steadily against my chest and barely maintaining the grip on my clothes, I still my hand. "Do you want to move to the chairs?" I ask, and after a moment of clear indecision, he nods.

I all but carry him over to the table, carefully setting him down in one of the two chairs set next to it. His head is bowed, eyes hidden behind his hair, and as I watch a small shudder shakes his frame. I pull the other chair over next to his, sitting down so there's only a few inches between us. Another small slice of eternity passes as we sit there, the occasional shiver sliding through his shoulders, until, finally, he speaks.

"I didn't black out," he says quietly, and the voice is so sudden in the quiet that I almost jump.

"What do you mean?" I ask, matching his volume and reaching out to touch his hand. He interlaces his fingers with mine, squeezing tightly enough that it almost hurts.

"When I..." he swallows, grip tightening just a little further. "When I fell, I wasn't unconscious." My breath nearly stops, and he shudders. "I was awake, I just couldn't- I couldn't move, I couldn't stop myself. Everything hurt, I was so tired, and I..." He looks up at me, briefly, and then down at our hands. "I hit the ground. I could hear the crunch, and there was so much pain, and so much blood. I couldn't breathe past it, and when I finally did black out I was glad." He gives a forced laugh, completely void of any kind of humor. "I thought I was dying, and I was glad."

He rushes to continue, almost like if he stops, he'll never be able to say it again. For all I know, maybe that's how he feels. "Every time I slip, or my leg buckles, I feel like it's about to happen again. Like any moment I'll hit the ground, and I'll be in pieces again. Like all that pain will be back, and I'll go back to struggling to breathe through the taste of blood." He shudders, head falling a few more inches. "In my dreams I, I'm falling. Bach is there, and he's laughing at me. I can feel his sword in my knee, or my chest, and I'm paralyzed, I can't stop falling, and I can see the ground coming up." A second laugh, this one significantly more pained than the first. "Bach was the first person I killed, did you know that? And when I saw his eyes dull, when I saw him die, I was sure that was going to haunt me. Killing another soul, really killing them, I was so sure that was going to be it. But I don't care.

"I can't find even the smallest part of me that's sad, or guilty, or regrets killing him. I killed someone, I felt their blood on my hands, on my face, and I don't care. What the hell does that make me?"

I stay silent for a few moments, thinking my answer through, before letting it leave my lips. "A shinigami," I say softly, giving a light squeeze to his hand, "just like any one of us." He looks up at me, and his brown eyes are so lost, so frightened, that I can barely keep from wincing. "I can't say Bach deserved to die, not with certainty, but I know Yamamoto died at his hands, and I know a lot more people died at his orders. Not just died, but were erased, completely. Quincy power kills, it doesn't purify like a zanpakuto. There are hundreds of souls that have been wiped from the balance, completely destroyed. In my opinion, I think death was a kind fate for Bach. He'll reincarnate, eventually."

I take a breath in, keeping our gazes locked. "I thought it would be harder, killing the Vandenreich. They aren't hollows, they don't hide behind masks. They look like us, they look like humans - because at heart they are - and I thought that would make it more difficult. But it didn't. Killing is my job, and driving Kazeshini through a quincy's heart wasn't any harder than slicing a hollow's mask apart. I've never enjoyed killing, not like some, but I've never shirked from it either. The ease that I can kill with, how good I am at it, that's what frightens me, sometimes. You're not the only one."

He stares at me for a few long moments, before he eases and his grip on my hand loosens, his eyes losing that lost quality. "That's good to know," he says in a relieved tone. He's silent for a long few moments, and his gaze falls to the ground, before he continues. "What about the rest of it?" he asks quietly. "What am I supposed to do?"

He's never sounded more like his age than in that moment, and the reminder hits home with savage impact. He's only seventeen, not even an adult by the standards of humans, let alone the shinigami. Kurosaki should still be in training, enjoying life as a teenager, not shouldered with the burdens his power has forced on him. But on the other hand, if we hadn't had the young man around, would we have survived the Vandenreich? Would we even have survived Aizen?

It's certainly not fair, not in the slightest. But maybe dropping this on Kurosaki was necessary, maybe it wasn't something that could be avoided. I'm not a huge believer in the idea of fate, but it seems like a good word to describe this.

"I don't know," I answer, "I'm not trained for any of this. But, I think..." I pause, choosing my words with precision. "Maybe once you're healed, it will get easier. I don't think the fear will ever go away, not completely, but maybe you can learn to manage it?"

He sighs, eyes closing, and nods. "I guess that's all I can really hope for, huh?" To my surprise, despite his words, he doesn't sound defeated. If anything, he actually sounds calmer than he's been over the entirety of our stay here. He releases my hand, and straightens up as he looks over at me. His brown eyes are hard with determination, and he offers me a tiny quirk of his lips that, I'm fairly sure, is a smile. "At least that's something. If it's going to stick around, I'll just have to get used to it." He gives an amused huff of breath, gaze rising towards the rest of the room. "Not the first time."

I can see the lingering signs of tension in his shoulders, in the clasp of his hands between his knees, but it's not the lost terror of minutes before. A small smirk twists my mouth, as I study the younger man. I already knew it, I knew it long before I ever truly met Kurosaki, but this is the first time I've seen it with my own eyes.

Kurosaki isn't just powerful, but he's strong as well. Strong in a way that most people can only dream of being. Does it matter that he faltered, or that just once, that strength waned a little? No. He's just a person, not a figurehead, and no one should expect him to be anything else.

"I'll make lunch," I announce as I stand from my chair, leaving behind the soft, quiet tones of our discussion. "Care to help?"

His eyes follow me, and that upturned corner of his mouth rises a fraction higher. "Yeah, sure." I hold out a hand, he takes it, and I pull him to his feet. I loop his arm over my shoulders, bearing most of his weight, and lead us both across the room to the room designated our kitchen.

I chew over the words on my tongue as we travel, and as I lift him up to sit on the counter, I let them fall between my lips. "I won't let you fall," I say softly, giving the wrist under my hand a gentle squeeze. His brown gaze rises to meet mine, just slightly narrowed.

"You don't even know me," he counters, and I shrug.

"Does that matter?" I ask. With the elevation from him sitting on the counter, we're the same height, and our eyes are level. "I agreed to help you recover, and you agreed to let me. Whatever you need from me, you can have it." I let him go, stepping to the side and opening the refrigerator, peering into its depths to see what we still have left in the way of ingredients.

"Thanks," he murmurs softly, and I give him a small nod.

Why should it matter that the only things I know about Kurosaki are his name and his trauma? That can change, it might, but it certainly doesn't have to. I said I would help, so I will. What other reason do I need?

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A/N: Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed! This was intended as a Shuuhei and Ichigo partnership, not a romance, but if you want to consider it a romance, please be my guest! XD