Chapter Text
The moment Ichigo felt the last of Yhwach’s reiatsu disappear into the air, she collapsed onto the rubble in a mix of disbelief and exhaustion.
Was it actually over?
“You’ve done it, Kurosaki Ichigo.”
She glanced over at the man beside her, sprawled out in a large pool of blood. Even in fantasy, she would have never thought Aizen Sōsuke would one day be her ally.
“It doesn’t feel real,” she replied softly, shaking her head.
“I am not surprised,” Aizen chuckled, causing more blood to spill down his lips. “I do consider you my greatest creation.”
She scowled at him. “I’m not your creation!”
His one uncovered eye bore into her.
“I’ve said this before— you may have parental inheritance from Shiba Isshin and even Yhawch, but it was I who designed you,” he said confidently. “The hollow of your Zangetsu is not only a reflection of you, but of me.”
“Shut up, Aizen.” she muttered, feeling too exhausted to even argue. “And here I was, concerned over you.”
“I’m touched,” he said smoothly. “You forget that I am immortal.”
“Must be nice, huh,” she snapped, shooting him another glare. “Wouldn’t that make your precious Hōgyoku your best creation?”
“Unfortunately, the Hōgyoku is also a product of that fool, Urahara, who I will not share pride with,” he clarified. “You, however, are mine.”
“Your ego is insufferable,” she groaned, nearly rolling her eyes.
Pushing herself to her feet with gritted teeth, Ichigo reset Zangetsu over her back before taking a closer step towards Aizen’s bloody form.
A large hole ripped through his chest, and his left arm was missing, yet he still had the peace of mind to smirk up at her.
“Can’t you heal and regenerate yourself?” She taunted.
“You forget again that only three out of nineteen Muken seals were released,” he supplied.
She narrowed her eyes. “And I’m sure there’s no way you didn’t undo any more on your own.”
Aizen simply chose to respond with a wide smile.
Sighing at the realisation that she couldn’t just leave him there as much as she wanted to, Ichigo crouched down and practically scraped Aizen off the bloody ground and roughly pulled him over her shoulders.
He hissed quietly, obviously not immune to pain in his state, and Ichigo felt a twinge of guilt.
“Hang in there. I’m sure Orihime can patch you right up,” she said, slowly dragging both of them away.
She didn’t know where Renji had been thrown, and the entirety of Seireitei looked thoroughly razed to the ground, she had no idea which way to go.
“How kind of you, Ichigo, to offer on her behalf,” Aizen said. “I am certain she would be less than pleased to see me.”
She coughed awkwardly. “Regardless of your past crimes, you did help save everyone this time, so…”
“You are still as naive as ever, I see.”
She huffed in annoyance. “And if you had just humbled yourself from your delusions of grandeur, I’m sure you would have never landed in such a mess to begin with.”
Aizen actually laughed at that. “Humility can not exist in line with a god.”
“Well, you’re not a god now, are you?” She retorted.
He hummed. “You are correct, Ichigo. My plan into the Royal Realm was a failed venture.”
“Be glad you didn’t make it,” she muttered. “Being chained up there looked like a lonely existence.”
Aizen didn’t answer her, and Ichigo continued to trek down the rubble, wondering where the heck Uryuu went after shooting that arrow. She would have thought they’d meet by now.
She could finally sense Renji in the distance, and before she managed to open her mouth and call out, she felt Aizen shift, and two hands suddenly came around the base of her neck.
It was a gentle gesture, with no pressure or killing intent but Ichigo realised with a sudden chill that his left arm had regenerated without her noticing.
“You were always such an interesting subject to study, Kurosaki Ichigo,” he said quietly in her ear. “I had been remiss not to understand your character sooner.”
“Aizen, what—“
Then heat exploded along her back, and Ichigo was thrown into an infinity of white.
Ichigo screamed as she went careening through the air, feeling as if the entire realm had disappeared beneath her feet and gravity had tripled around her.
She was plummeting at speeds in which she couldn’t tell up from down, and Ichigo had a horrifying feeling that she was going to end up as a puddle of blood once she hit the ground.
She focused reishi at her feet, trying to slow her descent and grab a foothold, but the spiritual energy flickered away, unable to manifest.
A blinding light grew behind her, and Ichigo felt like a star getting dragged into a black hole.
She squeezed her eyes closed, tucking her arms and legs for the inevitable impact as the sun swallowed her into oblivion.
For a moment, there was utter silence.
Ichigo peeled one eye open, expecting to see Aizen’s all too smug face staring down at her, but saw that she was in the middle of a sparse forest.
Jerking up from her crouched position, Ichigo glanced wildly around her for any clue for what had just happened.
“Aizen!” She yelled angrily, trying to sense him. “Show yourself you conniving son of a—“
Not a wisp of reiatsu was nearby.
Ichigo patted herself down in a mild panic, making sure she was still in one piece and clutched onto Zangetsu’s handle. She had been poor at sensing others when she first became a shinigami, but this was truly the first time she couldn’t feel anyone nearby.
Picking a direction, she staggered forward, inwardly cursing Aizen, Yhwach, and everyone in between.
“Bastard couldn’t have waited until I was healed at least?” she muttered, rubbing at her aching neck.
Just by the dense reishi in the air, she knew this wasn’t the human world, but she didn’t understand why Aizen would bother punting her across Soul Society by herself?
Scowling, Ichigo picked up her stride, moving with a light shunpo as her reiatsu slowly recovered. Within minutes she came across an old village, the straw roofs and the thin wooden walls a familiar sight to when she first arrived in Soul Society to save Rukia.
Except these homes looked horribly aged, crumbling and patched at every corner. A few people were moving about on the central road, and Ichigo noticed that they were barely covered in rags.
“Hey,” she called hoarsely, approaching one of the older men, who was crouched down repairing his home. “What district is this?”
The man barely turned around before falling flat on his back, eyes comically wide in shock. “S-Shinigami?”
The cry was immediate, and every soul in the area fled as if their lives were on the line, some screaming as they went.
Ichigo quickly grabbed onto the shoulder of the man before he could scurry away, bewildered by their reaction.
“Whoa, relax!” She said firmly, trying not to scowl. “I’m not here to hurt you! I just need some directions!”
The man cowered, completely trembling from head to toe as she held him down.
“Y-You’re not here to kill us?” He whimpered.
“Why would you even think that?”
The man shrunk into himself. “T-They say it’s for balance. Shinigami will come by and clear out half the district and just leave!”
A cold sense of dread ran down her back, and Ichigo suddenly recalled one of Rukia’s many lectures.
“An equal number of souls must be maintained in Soul Society and the Living World at all times. If the balance shifts too dramatically, it will destroy both.”
Ichigo pulled back her hand as if she’d been burned, and stared down at the old man in horror.
“I…” she hesitated, knowing there was nothing she could say in their defence. An apology didn’t seem right either.
“I just need to know where we are,” she finished lamely.
The man sniffled slightly, pushed back against the wall. “This is Zaraki, the 80th district of North Rukongai.”
Ichigo’s eyes bulged. “Zaraki?! The district that— that manic Kenpachi came from?”
“I-I don’t know of a Kenpachi,” he shook his head.
She sighed heavily, realising she had a lot of running to do in order to return to Seireitei.
“God, I’m gonna kill Aizen.”
Ichigo hadn't realised how large Soul Society was when she first arrived, but getting dumped in the furthest district from Seireitei was not the way she wanted to learn.
She guessed that if she went into her bankai and shunpo’d continuously across Rukongai, she’d be able to arrive within a day, but she had no spare energy.
After weeks of fighting and nearly dying left and right to Yhwach and his Quincy, Ichigo was starting to feel the exhaustion finally hit.
Aizen confirmed that Yhwach was gone, so there should be no rush, right?”
Then again, she had trusted that bastard for barely a minute and he managed to throw her across Soul Society.
Ichigo didn’t believe that he was still inclined to replace the Soul King, and with the Zero Division up there, she didn’t think he’d get away with it anyway, sealed as he was.
She pondered his motives as she leapt from one straw rooftop to the next, taking short naps within sturdy trees when she grew tired, and drinking from the long river that extended towards Seireitei.
After a few days, she finally arrived near the first district, and could see the white walls that surrounded Seireitei.
Except those white walls had been demolished by Yhwach and all of Seireitei should have been in rubble.
What greeted Ichigo was not destruction and debris, but a slightly different Soul Society from what she remembered.
It had only been a few days— there was no way they had rebuilt the entire thing already, right?
The first district was also way too lively after a massive war had just taken place. If Ichigo remembered correctly, the districts closest to Seireitei had been badly affected by Yhwach’s overtaking.
If she glanced around, there were no signs whatsoever that battles had taken place at all.
Anxiety began to creep into the pit of her stomach as her instincts began firing off at every suspicious thing.
Something seemed very wrong.
Was she trapped in Aizen’s illusion?
She couldn’t recall ever witnessing his shikai, and they had even worked together just moments before against Yhwach, with Ichigo remaining immune as she had always been.
Shaking off her sense of unease, she flickered towards the stone walls, noting that they were all held in the air, completely contrary to the emergency situation they were in just days prior.
Ichigo entered under the north wall with ease and stretched out her senses, reaching for the spirit ribbons of those she knew.
Then promptly panicked.
She couldn’t find any of them.
Rukia, Renji, Ikkaku, Byakuya, Tōshirō— even reiatsu beacons like Zaraki were gone.
Ichigo focused harder, combing through all the unfamiliar signatures and finally found a few she knew near the western side.
One was undoubtedly the Captain Commander Kyōraku, and the other was Ukitake— who she heard was dead.
Picking up her shunpo pace towards the west, Ichigo tried not to feel completely lost in panic for what was going on and promptly vaulted over walls and castle roofs, moving so fast that she went unseen to the patrolling shinigami beneath her.
She dropped into a lush green garden in the centre of what seemed to be the 8th Division Headquarters, landing before the two men who were conversing quietly over a small table of tea.
“Kyōraku, Ukitake! What is—“
The two turned swiftly at her voice, and Ichigo froze when they met eyes.
They looked young.
Both had much shorter hair than what she remembered, and Kyōraku had two eyes.
And there was no familiarity in their gaze.
“Hmm, who are you?” Kyōraku asked, stroking his chin.
Ichigo promptly collapsed to her knees and squeezed her eyes shut.
“An illusion,” she muttered, clutching painfully at her own head. “This isn’t real— come on, wake up! Wake up!”
Her reiatsu spiked wildly, and Ichigo heard the table clatter to the side and ceramic shatter as the two shinigami reacted.
She expected to feel the cold steel of their blades, when something warm draped over her back and a pair of hands fell on her shoulders.
“Breathe,” Ukitake’s voice washed over her. “You’re going to be alright.”
She shook her head, not wanting to see the reality before her. “No, no, no— “
“Call for the 4th,” Kyōraku said quietly on her left. “She looks hurt all over.”
Ichigo realised that she was drenched in cold sweat, and she snapped her eyes open to see the concerned but distant gazes of Kyōraku and Ukitake.
A horrible feeling settled in the pit of her stomach.
“The y-year,” she stammered, darting her gaze between the two of them. “How long has it been since the Quincy war?”
Both their eyes went wide, looking towards each other before Ukitake answered.
“If you’re talking about the battle between Genryūsai-sensei and Yhwach, it was around five hundred years ago.”
Five hundred.
The reality sank into her bones like cold ice, and Ichigo stopped breathing.
Was this all a cruel joke, or was she somehow catapulted half a millennia into the past?
Aizen.
“I— I need to go,” she said shakily, trying to get to her feet. “I can’t—“
It was all she managed to say before a large hand fell over her head, and there was a whisper of kidō, a blitz of reiatsu, then everything went black.
Jūshirō caught the girl as she went crashing back down, finally noticing the large zanpakutō as her long orange hair spilled over one shoulder.
He turned to Shunsui, confusion mirrored in his own gaze as a beat of silence settled between them.
“Well, that was interesting,” Shunsui muttered, lowering his hand. “Not the usual type of lady who claims to know us.”
Jūshirō sent him a half hearted glare, pulling the girl more comfortably into his arms. “This kind of extreme distress is telling of something serious, Shunsui.”
“I would say she looks like she just finished a life or death battle, but that reiatsu—“
He didn’t need to finish the sentence.
It had fluctuated all over the place, but it was massively heavy. There was no way she could have fought and not caused alarm bells to go off with this level of power.
“Let’s call Unohana to get her healed up first,” he suggested. “We can hopefully ask more questions when she’s better.”
Shunsui nodded. “Leave her in my spare office. I have a feeling it’ll be best if we keep her presence as unnoticed as possible.”
Jūshirō wanted to argue, unsure about leaving an unknown shinigami right beside his closest friend, but the firm look in Shunsui’s eyes stopped him.
“Fine,” he relented, carrying her inside.
Unohana arrived within half an hour, alone as Shunsui had requested, and took one look at the unknown shinigami before settling beside her with a puzzled expression.
“How unusual,” she whispered, waving her hand around as layers of healing kidō flickered to life. “Her reiryoku feels… interesting.”
Jūshirō shared a look with Shunsui, knowing exactly what she referred to.
“I don’t suppose you know who she is?” Shunsui asked calmly.
Unohana shook her head. “I would have remembered someone like her had we met.”
“I agree,” Shunsui nodded. “How she knew us by name— and obviously at a personal level— is odd.”
“She seemed convinced this was an illusion though,” Jūshirō remembered, rubbing his jaw in thought. “Do we have any old records of shinigami like her who were banished or sealed?”
“Good point. Her inquiry about the year was telling,” Shunsui added.
“This…” Unohana suddenly frowned, leaning closer.
“What is it?” He asked, glancing at the woman for any obvious changes.
“She seems to be absorbing the nearby reishi, and her internal injuries are regenerating on their own,” Unohana answered seriously. “It’s quite slow, perhaps because she’s passively doing it in her unconscious state, but she is healing herself.”
“Absorbing reishi?” Shunsui’s eyes widened.
“She did ask about the Quincy war,” Jūshirō muttered. “But she’s clearly a shinigami, zanpakutō and all.”
“Strange, very strange,” Shunsui crossed his arms. “Shall we call Yama-jī to see if he can recognize her?”
“Give it time,” Unohana shook her head. “He won’t take kindly to outside and unknown forces, and we wouldn’t want to prematurely turn her into an enemy.”
Jūshirō agreed with that. Yamamoto was suspicious in nature and prone to fight first and talk later, and he had no desire to see Ryūjin Jakka unleashed again.
“Very well, we can wait for her to wake.”
He was certain it would be a very interesting conversation.