Chapter Text
He knows it's over. His opponent’s gleaming blade is lodged neatly between his ribs. It didn't even nick the bone going in. He can hear the voices of his soul screaming at him. He knows―they know―he's not not going to make it out of this with just another devastating scar to add to his collection.
It's funny how time seems to stop when he knows he's already dead. He's not seeing his life (whatever little of it he spent actually alive–in his own body) flash before his eyes or anything. There's no cliche film reel of all his regrets or favorite memories or faces of his friends and family.
He feels the blade slice sideways out of his body. It's clean, not cutting through bone, just the muscle, his lung, his heart. The darkest part of his soul screams to take one last shot at the being who tore his world apart, tore him apart; and he does. A surge of intertwined blue-red-black and his opponent is dead too, he can see the realization in the bastard's eyes. There is no victor here. There aren't even survivors. The last thing he sees is blood browned strands of his too orange hair and a body-strewn, white and red wasteland.
His next conscious thought is that he's dead and shouldn't be having conscious thoughts. This makes the echoing voice in his soul cackle. ‘ I cannot possibly be alive―in any sense of the word. I definitely died,’ he thinks to himself. He hears his soul cackle even louder and he opens his eyes to find Tessai leaning right in his face.
Tessai is dead.
Ichigo saw him die.
“What the fuck,” is what he voices at length. And that sends Zangetsu into paroxysms of hysterical laughter that Ichigo can just tell are going to send him over the edge of one of the sideways buildings in his inner world and splashing into his soul’s flood waters. He vindictively hopes the sword spirit chokes.
A few awkward seconds later Tessai leans back and calls out to Getaboushi, “Tenchou! He’s awake.”
Ichigo doesn’t even react once the large man backs off. Ichigo.exe has crashed , is all he can bring himself to think. He can hear Zangetsu’s coughing, sputtering, wet laughter and knows his zanpakutou is in fact choking. Not that he actually begrudges his soul partner his mirth. If this is what he thinks it must be, and isn’t some after-Soul-Society-afterlife afterlife, well, shit’s about to hit the fan soon, so Zangetsu may as well get his laughs in while he can. Fucking time travel.
Urahara saunters into the room soon enough and when he looks at Ichigo, who has since thrown one arm over his face, he frowns behind his fan. “Are you dead after all Kurosaki-kun? It was a lot of work to fix you up you know~♥”
“You're a fucking drama queen, Getaboushi,” Ichigo grumbles from under his arm before letting it slide off his face. “And you’re a fucking idiot.” He sits up slowly, knowing he’s not completely healed. If he has somehow miraculously time-travelled, and has yet to save Rukia from execution, that means fucking Aizen doesn’t have the hogyoku yet. But it has basically been handed to him by Getaboushi who just let Rukia be taken. If there’s any fucking way to salvage this shitshow so they all don’t die like last time, he can’t let Aizen have that goddamn miracle marble of doom.
Urahara frowns more deeply behind his fan. He knows he acts the fool, but this is incredibly out of character for Ichigo. He had expected the teen to wake up screaming and begging for a way to save his friend, not insult him - well the insults themselves aren’t particularly out of character, but the body language is. Ichigo looks resigned and tired. He flutters his fan, “And pray tell, why would you say that~?” he asks flippantly.
Ichigo knows Urahara’s not stupid. He’s not acting like his fifteen year old self would and Urahara can tell. That’s fine though, Kisuke would have been the first person he’d go to anyway. He frowns at Urahara as if it isn’t his default facial expression. “You aren’t gonna believe me until you see it for yourself, go ahead and knock my soul out of my body.”
Urahara’s eyes narrow, “You’re not a shinigami anymore, Kurosaki-kun,” the address grates on Ichigo’s ears; he hasn’t been ‘Kurosaki-kun’ to Urahara in over 10 years. Fucking menos on a stick. Zangetsu has gone quiet.
“Where’d your senses fuck off to Urahara? Feel my fucking reiatsu, then knock me out of my fucking body.”
Kisuke’s reiatsu reaches out to him and Ichigo flexes his own. He’s been concealing it on habit, which is probably why Kisuke thinks what Byakuya did to him worked like it had in the past. But seeing as he’s been hearing Zangetsu since he regained consciousness, his soul should still be going on 30, not that it’s changed his looks much. He still looks no older than 22, seeing as that was when his human body had finally quit on him. Apparently, throwing your soul in and out of your body several hundred times is enough to kill you regardless of whether you use a mod soul or not; human bodies are not gigai after all. But he lets some slip so Kisuke can feel him. He bites back a smug smirk when Kisuke’s eyes widen and he can basically see the gears grinding in the other man’s brain behind those shadowed grey-green eyes.
“That is not Kuchiki Rukia’s shinigami power.” Kisuke says.
“Nope.”
“That is your shinigami power.”
“Yep.”
“I’m going to knock your soul out of your body now, Kurosaki-kun.”
“Fucking finally.”
“You’ve gotten incredibly foul mouthed in the last 10 hours,” Urahara remarks as he knocks Ichigo out of his human body.
“Try 'in the last 13 years,' Getaboushi,” Ichigo retorts as he stands and stretches. His hair is shaggy around his face, but ties into a sleek, long ponytail at the nape of his neck, and a scar cuts a jagged path over his left eye and half-way down his cheek. Zangetsu is strapped to his back in their unreleased form: a single nodachi with a blue, white and black wrapped handle and a mirrored crescent handguard. He’s not in the typical shinigami shihakusho. In fact, it doesn’t look like anything Kisuke’s ever seen before. It's like a cross between living world army fatigues and the Onmitsukido's uniform. There is no excess fabric. The outfit is designed for stealth. The only thing on Ichigo that’s not black is the white obi at his waist and his zanpakuto's hilt.
“If I am understanding your implication correctly Kurosaki-kun, I hope you plan to explain..?” Kisuke is on guard, he does not know this Kurosaki Ichigo. He can’t calculate his responses, he can’t predict him. He is an unknown variable and that makes Kisuke very nervous.
“Calm the fuck down, Urahara. If I didn’t plan to explain I wouldn’t have even let you guess something was wrong. The you of my time would have noticed right away, but this you? You would have never had a clue. You don’t know me well enough yet.”
That’s exactly what has me nervous, Kurosaki-kun , is what Kisuke doesn’t say. Ichigo rolls his eyes at him as though he can tell exactly what he’s thinking. The young man trusts him at least, but Kisuke’s pretty sure that if this Ichigo wanted to end him, he’d have no trouble doing just that.
“Your body should be fine without you for a bit, shall we have some tea?” Kisuke suggests, leading Ichigo to the sitting room.
Ichigo snorts, “As long as you’re not the one making it, Kis—Urahara,” he corrects himself, “The you of my time finally learned to make if not ‘mediocre’ at least ‘not horrible’ tea, but if I remember correctly, right now, I’d be better off drinking drain cleaner than anything you make. And call me Ichigo. You haven’t called me ‘Kurosaki-kun’ in over a decade, it’s weird.”
“How rude, Ichigo-kun,” He replies, but it’s not like Ichigo is wrong. He is a legitimate disaster in the kitchen.
“Seriously, drop the honorifics, it’s really fucking weird.”
“If you insist.”
“I do.”
Urahara calls out for Tessai and asks for tea. If Tessai is startled by Ichigo’s appearance he doesn’t comment as he goes to fulfil Urahara’s request.
By the time they're sat with tea in front of them, Kisuke is more tense than he's been in decades. He lays Benihime across his lap; she’s a comfort when he can no longer feel Kurosaki-kun―no, Ichigo's―reiatsu. If this were the Ichigo of last week, his reiatsu would be bearing down on the rest of the room's occupants while the orange haired teenager remained oblivious as ever. Now, this older, more tired, more dangerous Ichigo has his reiryoku locked down so thoroughly, Kisuke would have thought him no more than a regular powerless plus soul, had Ichigo a soul chain. The fact that he doesn't, and that Ichigo barely let him taste his reiryoku earlier lets him know that Ichigo is well aware of how dangerous it would be for someone of his power to let it go like he had before―and how much information someone like Kisuke could gain from just a little interaction with someone's reiryoku. And to know that Ichigo knows how dangerous Kisuke can be is more unsettling than anything else.
"So are we gonna talk or not, Getaboushi? Neither of us is getting any younger and you've basically just given Aizen the key to handing the Gotei their asses with his hands tied behind his back." Ichigo stares at him blankly over his tea and Kisuke winces.
“It was not my most...well thought out plan,” Kisuke admits, fan splaying across his face as he strokes Benihime in his lap.
Ichigo’s amused expression is, at least, less unsettling than the resigned tiredness and blank expressions he’d been subject to since the boy woke.
“Understatement of the century, Getaboushi,” says Ichigo around his smirk.
Urahara’s shoulders relax a bit. Ichigo clearly trusts him to let him see this kind of expression. Kisuke’s not ready to let go of all his masks, but he can do Ichigo the courtesy of not playing with him. He knows that Ichigo is aware of his strength, and he’s had a taste of Ichigo’s. The fact that Ichigo had allowed him that at all was an incredible show of trust. Perhaps, he could take a leap of faith. Ichigo had been the trump card he was counting on in the battle with Aizen; the fact that Ichigo had clearly tangled with vicious opponents and survived with nothing worse than some gnarly scars and probably some nightmares, and is willing to lay his cards on the table...well, Kisuke had taken worse gambles.
Kisuke sets his fan down on the table, and gently holds his teacup in both hands, “Will you tell me about it, Ichigo?”
“It’s not a happy story,” Ichigo lets out a mirthless chuckle, “then again, I doubt you’d expect it to be.”
Kisuke hums in assent. Time travel theoretically is possible—at least within the Dangai precipice world, but really, even he would not resort to attempting something like that unless there were no other choice.
“The last thing I remember before waking up here is dying.”
Kisuke chokes on his tea. He coughs to regain his breath, “WHAT?!”
“Hmm, yeah. I was definitely dead. Like, really dead. Moving into the reincarnation cycle dead. Soul dead. It wasn’t like I’ve actually lived in my human body for, like, the last five years,” Ichigo cocks his head like he’s doing some mental math, he nods, “four years, and I’ve been technically dead since, well, three days from now. I used my human body as a gigai, basically, until my internal organs gave out. It’s not like human bodies are meant to be without souls for very long anyhow.”
Kisuke is taken aback by Ichigo’s nonchalance. Urahara, himself, is over 400 years old. Half of the Vizard, Isshin, the Soutaichou, Kyouraku, Ukitake, and Unohana are all older than him by more than two centuries, and half of them by more than four. None of them is so blatantly undisturbed by the thought of joining the reincarnation cycle.
"You're not even thirty!" Kisuke all but gapes.
"Yeah, well, when you spend almost the entirety of your teenage years and the next decade after that in battle after battle against god-like megalomaniacs and uber-powerful psychopaths, you kind of come to expect to die young," Ichigo replies cooly, "It's not like I haven't been technically dead for nearly half that time anyway, and most of my friends and allies were dead too, so I'm not too cut up about it."
Kisuke blanches and clutches at Benihime for support. “Why did you even—,” he cuts himself off and takes a deep breath. Guilt is pooling heavily in his chest, Ichigo was his sorry gambit. His Queen on the chessboard. When he'd realized that Isshin and Masaki were planning a family... Ichigo hadn’t even been born when Kisuke had started plotting. He swallows against his dry throat and removes his hat. He bows over his knees.
“I am so sorry,” he rasps lowly. “I don’t know how you can even look at me, with all you must know…” he trails off. He stares at his knees not knowing how, even if he could somehow atone for his hand in Ichigo’s trials—his death, what could possibly be equivalent to a child’s future?
“Raise your head Urahara Kisuke,” Ichigo all but commands. Kisuke blinks at his knees, before looking up through his bangs. Ichigo is scowling at him. ‘It’s amazing how many different scowls he has,’ Kisuke thinks blankly. “My death was not your fault,” the younger man says with conviction. “You may have had a hand in many things, including this ridiculous situation with Rukia,” he continues, “but never once since, have you purposefully lied to my face with the intention to hurt me.”
Kisuke sits up straighter, and breathes. Ichigo’s scowl softens and his eyes are fond, “You certainly ran me around and made fun of me enough, kept quiet about things I certainly would have liked to know, but when shit hit the fan you always had my back. Even if I had woken at a different point in the past, you would have been the first person I’d go to anyway. Make of that what you will.” Ichigo takes a sip of the tea that had sat forgotten on the table for the last several minutes. Kisuke follows suit, the guilt churning in his chest slowly being replaced by relief that future him had not shown himself to be someone who Ichigo had come to resent for getting him involved in Kisuke’s mess.
“So yeah, I died and woke up here, I have absolutely no idea why I’m not dead or reincarnating or whatever, but here I am. We should probably discuss the current situation at hand instead of fretting about how I came to be here anyhow. Rukia is about to be sentenced to execution via the Soukyoku so Aizen can get his hands on your Hogyoku,” Ichigo continues apropos of nothing.
“I assume you plan to do something drastic and destructive to save her,” Kisuke returns, perfectly willing to leave any more discussion of Ichigo’s death for a later time.
“It was your plan,” Ichigo replies with a raised eyebrow and a quirk of his lips, “Yoruichi took us up to Kuukaku’s place to use the Shiba fireworks cannon to enter the Seireitei. It worked, and was an adequate distraction, but it also played right into Aizen’s hand. He used our blatant invasion to fake his death, and blame the ‘ryoka.’ We were certainly pursued more heavily because of that.”
Kisuke digests this, as he takes another sip of tea. “What would you suggest, instead, Ichigo?” the orange-haired man clearly knows more about the situation than Kisuke has managed to guess so far.
“If Yoruichi can get us through the Shihouin senkaimon directly into the Seireitei it would be the best. I wish we didn’t have to worry about the Cleaner, but Aizen hasn’t destroyed it yet, so we’ll have to make do. If we can’t use the Shihouin senkaimon, then I think our next best option would be for me to open a garganta into one of the outer districts where hollows are more common and make our way into the seireitei through either the sewer routes that extend into the first districts that the 4th likes to use, or have Yoruichi filch us some of the Onmitsukido’s covert-mission reiryoku tags to get us in. Going as a full frontal assault like we did before just made us an easier target.”
Kisuke blinks, “Ok,” he’s not quite sure what he’s supposed to focus on the most out of that monologue. Aizen destroyed the Cleaner in the Dangai? Ichigo can open garganta? Ichigo knows about the Shihouin senkaimon and covert-mission reiryoku tags?
Ichigo sets down his empty teacup with an amused expression, “I’ll let you think about that and come back tomorrow. You should get some sleep Getaboushi, you’ve clearly been awake for way too long. Maybe get in touch with Yoruichi, yeah? She can usually talk you out of your destructive self-deprecation spirals. I’m going to go punch Goat-face and hug my sisters.” Ichigo gets up and walks out of the room toward his body, shutting the shoji door behind him.
Kisuke stares down at the dregs of his tea, Ichigo must know him better than he’d thought. ‘ I’ll get in touch with Yoruichi in the morning, ’ he thinks.