The tarp they had gotten from the garden shed slapped against the broken frame of the wall, a dull, rhythmic sound that echoed in the silent house.
It was four in the morning.
Ichigo was sitting on the floor of his wrecked room, his back against the only remaining intact wall, and while he couldn't sleep, he hadn't tried either.
The silence in his head was the problem.
Before, there was always noise. It wasn't always the maniacal laugh he had heard during the fight, but there was a kind of static.
Now, thanks to Rukia's bite, that static was gone, but the remaining silence wasn't good.
He felt empty, as if something were missing, and that feeling made him nervous.
He touched his neck with his fingertips. The skin was sensitive, a little bruised, but it didn't hurt anymore. The memory of the sensation, though, of how it had quieted the noise... that sent a shiver through him.
He looked toward the closet door, which was now closed.
"This is completely... insane..." Ichigo whispered into the cold air of the room.
There was a second of silence, and then, a muffled, grumpy voice answered from inside the closet.
"I'm glad you're finally catching up, idiot."
Ichigo flinched, though a part of him had been expecting her to answer. He crawled on his knees until he was closer to the wooden door.
"Damn. You've been awake this whole time?"
There was a sound of movement. "I'm locked in a closet in a strange house, in a strange town, after... well, after that. No, Ichigo, I'm not sleeping peacefully."
Ichigo rested his forehead against the door. "Sorry."
"For which part?" Rukia's voice retorted. "The part where you stabbed me and 'bound' me to you, or the part where you shoved me in a closet you probably haven't cleaned in five years?"
"The closet, I guess," Ichigo said. "How... how do you feel? The pain...?"
"The pain is gone," she said, her voice less sharp. "The wound healed... when... you know. When I transformed. But I feel... weak. And you? Happy with the silence in your head?"
Ichigo swallowed, knowing that admitting it out loud made it real. "...No."
There was a pause from the other side.
"No?" Rukia asked, her voice softer now, confused.
"No. It's... weird," Ichigo admitted. "I don't like it."
"Great." Rukia's voice was pure sarcasm, but there was a tremor of fear just beneath it. "Just great. So you broke your brain and my powers. Good work for one night."
"Hey! You're the one who asked me to stab you! You brought the monster to my house!"
"I asked you to take half my power! Not to drain me completely and 'bind' me to your... to your inner thing!"
"Shh!" Ichigo suddenly hissed, hitting the door.
"Don't shush me, you...!"
"No, seriously, shut up!" he interrupted, tensing. "What is that?"
Rukia went silent.
And then they heard it. The sound of a car stopping on the street, right in front of the house. Doors shut, followed by muffled voices.
"Shit," Ichigo said, jumping to his feet. "They're back."
He went down the stairs two at a time, his heart pounding in his throat. He reached the bottom of the staircase just as the front door opened with a creak.
Isshin entered first. He looked exhausted, his doctor's coat wrinkled and dark circles under his eyes, but as soon as he saw Ichigo standing in the foyer, his face transformed. He straightened up, inhaled deeply, and threw his arms in the air.
"MY HOME!" he roared, though his voice cracked mid yell. "MY POOR, BEAUTIFUL HOUSE! VIOLATED BY A HEARTLESS, OUT OF CONTROL MONSTER TRUCK!"
Karin came in behind him, pale and with a straight face, but her dark eyes locked onto Ichigo instantly.
Yuzu was the last to enter. She was clinging to the back of Karin's jacket, and her eyes were swollen and red from crying so much. She was visibly trembling.
"Dad..." Yuzu whispered, her voice so small it was barely audible. "Please... don't yell. My head hurts."
Isshin's act vanished instantly. He turned, his face wrinkling with genuine, deep concern, and in a second he was lifting Yuzu into his arms.
"Oh, my love. My little Yuzu. Of course. You're right." He cradled her against his chest. "Dad's sorry. You were very, very scared, weren't you?"
Yuzu only nodded, hiding her face in Isshin's neck and sobbing quietly.
"Come on," Isshin murmured, his voice a soothing rumble now. "Dad will make you some hot honey tea. The special Kurosaki family tea cures everything."
He carried Yuzu toward the kitchen, but he stopped at the door and looked over his shoulder at Ichigo.
"You," he said, his voice serious for a moment. "Make sure your sister doesn't sell the house for parts while I'm not looking."
He pointed at Karin, who hadn't moved an inch.
"And you," he said to Karin, "make sure your delinquent brother doesn't try to 'fix' anything else. He's done enough."
Karin didn't answer. The kitchen door closed, and the only sound in the house was water beginning to fill a kettle.
The silence stretched. It was awkward.
"The 'monster truck' lie was the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life," Karin finally said, her voice low and dead.
"It was the best I could come up with at the time," Ichigo defended himself, rubbing the back of his neck.
Karin finally looked at him, and there was none of her usual boredom in her expression, only a cold, exhausted anger.
"Seriously? A monster truck? On the second floor? How the hell was it supposed to get up there, Ichigo? Did it have wings?"
"Dad bought it."
"Dad will believe anything," Karin snapped. "Yuzu bought it because she's terrified and doesn't know what else to believe, but I don't."
"Karin, I..."
"I had to lie for you." Karin crossed her arms, her body tense. "I sat in a stinky plastic chair at the police station for two hours, lying to some guy with a mustache. I told him I saw 'weird lights' and that the truck was 'really loud'. The cop almost laughed in my face."
"Karin, you're safe," Ichigo said, trying to sound reassuring. "That's what matters."
"I'm not safe," she retorted, taking a step forward. "And neither are you. Shut up."
"What?"
"I said shut up." Her voice was hard. "I saw the thing, Ichigo. I saw that giant bone mask. I saw the hole in its chest. And I saw the girl in the black kimono."
Ichigo tensed completely.
"I saw her fight it. I saw her yell at you. Yuzu thinks it was a nightmare or a gas explosion. I don't."
Karin took another step, closing the distance between them. She was furious.
"And I saw you. I saw you put on those black clothes. I saw that ridiculously big sword. And I saw what you did to that thing..."
"Karin, you have to lower your voice, Dad is going to..."
"I don't care!" she hissed. "So you're going to stop treating me like Yuzu and you're going to tell me what the hell happened. Right now."
She paused, her gaze traveling up the stairs. "And you're going to tell me where the girl is. She's upstairs, right? In your closet?"
"She's... upstairs," Ichigo said, the lie dying on his lips. "She's... safe."
"Safe? Or is she a prisoner?" Karin's eyes narrowed. "Who is she, Ichigo? Is she one of them? Another monster?"
"She's not!" The pressure started to build behind his eyes, and the empty silence from before was being replaced by something worse: a sharp, stabbing anxiety.
"Karin, not now. Please. I'm... I'm tired."
"Don't give me that crap! Is she going to hurt us? Are you going to let...?"
"She's not!" Ichigo yelled, grabbing his head as a sharp, cold pain stabbed into his right temple. "She... she saved us. It's... it's complicated."
In the darkness of the closet, upstairs, Rukia choked.
She felt the cold first, and then the itching. The same itching as before, the one she felt right before biting him, but this time it was ten times worse. It was coming from her arm, from her face.
"No..." she whispered, scratching at the closet wall. "Not again."
She tried to control it, to push it down with her will, but the connection with Ichigo was tense and tight because he was too far away. The power he held, her power, was unbalanced by the distance.
"He's too far... He's... he's fighting," she panted. She felt her skin hardening, pulling at her muscles. Smooth white bone crawled over her fingers, elongating them. Panic flooded her, a cold terror that wasn't entirely her own.
"I can't...!"
She felt the hunger, the urge to bite, and the urge to hunt.
"Ichigo...!"
Downstairs, Ichigo screamed. The pain was blinding.
It wasn't just a headache; it was panic. A pure, animal terror seized him, a voice that wasn't his screaming that she was dying, that everything was wrong, that she was incomplete, and he could feel her changing, twisting in pain and fear.
"Shit, shit, shit!"
"Ichigo!" Karin recoiled, her anger replaced by genuine fear at seeing him double over. "What's wrong with you? You've gone pale!"
"It's her!" he yelled, pushing past her. "I have to...!"
He ran for the stairs, taking them at a run.
"Ichigo! What's wrong?" Karin ran after him, completely scared.
He didn't answer and burst into his room, not bothering with the closet doorknob. He grabbed it with both hands and pulled. The old wood groaned but didn't give.
"ICHIGO!" Karin yelled from the bedroom doorway.
He roared and tore the closet door off its hinges, throwing it across the room.
Rukia was curled into a ball in the back, glowing with a sickly white light.
The left half of her face was covered by the bone mask, smooth and gleaming, with a single red line running down from where her eye should be. Her left arm was a gnarled white claw. The purple eye that was visible was wide with terror.
The instant Ichigo burst into the room, the second he was within ten feet of her, the pressure in his head vanished.
It was gone, just like that. It simply disappeared.
Rukia let out a choked cry. The mask cracked instantly, shattering into pieces that flew toward Ichigo as black and red light before fading. The bone on her arm vanished, her skin returning to normal.
They fell at almost the same time. Ichigo slammed against the wall frame, gasping, cold sweat running down the back of his neck. Rukia collapsed onto the pile of blankets, trembling violently, but human again.
The only sound in the room was three people gasping for air.
Karin stood in the bedroom doorway, eyes wide, her hand covering her mouth. She had seen the mask. She had seen the claw. And she had seen it vanish as soon as Ichigo was close enough.
She looked at Ichigo, who was wiping his face with trembling hands. She looked at Rukia, who was crying silently in the back of the closet. And she looked back at Ichigo.
"...Well," Karin whispered, her voice shaking for the first time that night. "Got it."
She walked over and closed Ichigo's bedroom door with a soft click, shutting out the rest of the house and the normal world.
A minute later, the three of them were in the center of the ruined room. Karin had closed the door. Rukia was sitting on the edge of Ichigo's bed, wrapped in one of the blankets from the closet, still shaking. Ichigo was leaning on his broken desk, trying to catch his breath.
Karin was the first to speak.
"Okay. No more lies. Summary." She pointed at Ichigo. "You ate a monster last night, and somehow, you 'bound' yourself to her."
Then she pointed at Rukia, who glared at her. "And she turns into that monster... or a version of it... if she gets too far away. And you go crazy."
"It's... it's more complicated than that," Rukia said, her voice hoarse from screaming.
"Not much more complicated," Ichigo said, rubbing his chest. He still felt the pull. "What the hell was that? I thought the bite last night fixed it!"
"Fixed!" Rukia shot him a murderous look. "Idiot, you didn't fix anything! The bite only... calmed the... thing you have inside! It didn't fix the connection! Our souls are tangled, and the power isn't stable!"
"Okay," Karin interrupted, ever practical. "How far?"
Ichigo and Rukia looked at her. "What?"
"How far?" Karin repeated. "What's the radius? The leash? One floor? The house? The street? We just saw the stairs are too far. We need to know."
"I... I don't know," Rukia admitted. "There's no manual for this. I just know that when you went downstairs... an itch started, and then... I couldn't stop it. The power was... going crazy."
"And I couldn't breathe," Ichigo said. "I felt like my head was going to explode. I heard her... I felt her. All her panic."
"We have to test it," Karin said.
"Test it?" Ichigo said. "Are you crazy? It almost killed me!"
"Better to test it now, here, than when you're at the corner store buying milk," Karin retorted. "Get up."
"What?"
"Get up. Leave the room. Walk down the hall. I'll stay here with her. Tell me when it starts to hurt."
"No!" Rukia yelled, gripping the blanket. "Don't do that! You don't know what...!"
"We have to know," Karin insisted. "You can't stay in this room forever. Or what? Are you two going to the bathroom together for the rest of your lives?"
The image made Ichigo blush. "Okay, okay, damn it. Fine."
He stood up, his muscles tense. He walked to the door. "I'm in the hallway."
He looked at Rukia. She had her eyes squeezed shut, her knuckles white. "Keep going," she whispered.
"Okay... one step. Two. I'm at the stair landing."
"Still fine," Karin said, watching Rukia intently.
"Going down the first step... the second... the third..."
"There!" Rukia yelled, grabbing her arm. "Stop! The itching! It's starting!"
Ichigo ran back into the room in two strides. The itching on Rukia's arm subsided, but she was looking at him in panic.
"Shit," Ichigo said, running his hands through his hair. "Seriously? Half a staircase? That's useless! That's not even the downstairs bathroom!"
"Great." Karin ran a hand through her hair, imitating Ichigo. "So you're tied together by an invisible cord. A very, very short one. And we have a problem."
"A problem?" Ichigo said. "Besides... well, all of this?"
"An immediate one," Karin corrected. "A much bigger one than the monster in the closet."
Ichigo and Rukia spoke at the same time. "What?"
Karin looked at them with total exasperation. "School! It starts in three hours!"
The reality of the situation hit them hard.
"Shit," Ichigo said.
"You can't go!" Rukia yelled, jumping to her feet, the blanket falling to the floor.
"I have to go!" he retorted, punching the broken wall. "Dad already thinks I'm a juvenile terrorist because of the hole in the wall! If I'm absent today, right after last night, he'll call the cops! He'll call the school! And they'll search my room!"
"So let them search!" Rukia yelled.
"And they'll find you!"
There was a tense silence.
"You can't leave me here alone," Rukia said, her voice dropping, the fear returning. "We just proved that doesn't work. As soon as you walk out the front door, I'll transform. And you... you'll go crazy or pass out in the middle of math class."
"Shit. She's right." Ichigo grabbed his orange hair with both hands. "So what? What do we do? Do I have to skip?"
"You can't," Karin said. "That will only bring more questions. Questions we can't answer."
"So I take you with me?" Ichigo suggested.
"How?" Rukia said.
"Can you make yourself small or something?" Karin asked.
Rukia glared at her. "I'm a soul! I'm not a Tamagotchi!"
"What if I put you in my backpack?" Ichigo suggested, desperate.
"I can't fit in your...!" Rukia stopped short. She looked at Ichigo's canvas backpack tossed in the corner. "Backpack... Body... Container..."
Her eyes flew open. "Idiot. You're an idiot."
"Why does everyone keep calling me that tonight?!"
"We can't take my body!" Rukia said, stating the obvious. "I can't go physically. I'm a soul. My body... my body is just a temporary container the Soul Society gave me. If I had a Gigai...!"
"A what?" Ichigo and Karin said at the same time.
"A fake body! A substitute!" Rukia was pacing the room, full of nervous energy. "Soul Reapers use them when we need to operate in the human world for long periods. I can put my soul in it, and I can... you know. Move. Eat. Go to school."
"Great," Ichigo said, feeling some hope for the first time. "Problem solved. Where do we get one? Amazon? Is there a Gigai store?"
"Don't be stupid!" Rukia snapped, her hope fading as quickly as it had come. "They don't grow on trees! They come from the Soul Society. From the Research and Development Institute. And I can't contact them."
"Why not?" Ichigo asked. "Don't you have a soul phone?"
"No, idiot! And even if I did, I couldn't!" Her voice broke. "A Soul Reaper can't 'lose' their powers. It's a capital crime. Giving them to a human... is treason. And I didn't just give them to you... you broke them! You took them all! And you 'bound' them to a... to a...!"
She stopped, unable to say it.
"To a what?" Ichigo asked, his voice low.
Rukia looked at him, her purple eyes filled with a fear he hadn't seen before. "To a Hollow. The thing inside you. The laugh you heard last night. That's a Hollow, Ichigo. You have a Hollow living inside your soul. And you just tied my powers directly to it."
Karin and Ichigo stared at her.
"If the Soul Society finds out about this," Rukia whispered, "they will 'purify' us both. And I promise you, it won't be quick."
Ichigo collapsed onto the bed. "Shit. So we're back to the backpack."
"Shut up," Karin said suddenly.
Ichigo looked at her. "What?"
"I said shut up. Do you hear that?"
Ichigo and Rukia strained their ears. The wind slapped the tarp. The house creaked. The faint sound of Isshin humming in the kitchen.
"I don't hear anything," Ichigo said.
"Exactly," Karin said. She had moved to the giant hole in the wall, pulling the tarp aside to look out at the dark Karakura street, which was starting to turn a blue gray with the first light of dawn. "No birds. No cars. Just... that."
Ichigo joined her, looking out at the street. "What...?"
Karin pointed. "There's a black cat sitting on the light pole across the street. It's been there for ten minutes. Ever since Dad got home."
Rukia tensed. Her voice was a sharp whisper. "A black cat?"
"Yeah," Karin said, not taking her eyes off it. "And I swear... it's watching us. Staring right at this room."
******
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