Chapter Text
It is a preponderance of evidence that leads Ichigo to decide that he really shouldn’t have trusted that anyone involved knew what they were doing, Kisuke Urahara especially.
Hueco Mundo wasn’t hospitable: sand wore down the skin, bitter winds chilled to the bone, food was practically non-existent, and water was only sourced deep in the ground in hard-to-find wells. Despite this, it was where they had all lived for most of the last few years. This is not where Ichigo is now.
The room he sat in was illuminated by the soft light of street lamps outside, casting a faint warm yellow glow through the open window. Ichigo stares around blankly. His old bedroom was a far cry from the small two-person canvas tent that he had grown used to sharing.
It was hard to quantify, but there was also something distinctly wrong with the room. An older cell phone was plugged in and charging on the desk beside his bed. A beat-up bookbag was sitting by the door. A light breeze rustles the curtains that brush against Ichigo’s arm. His skin is so sensitive it feels like a burn.
It was only supposed to be five years. That had been the goal anyway, with an alleged margin of error of six months. This was not that.
“Fuck.”
Ichigo launches himself out of the bed, and the blanket that had pooled around his waist catches around his legs. He stumbles and lands on his knees by the door where his book bag sits. Adrenaline floods and his hands shake as he overturns his bag and things spill out. The sound of textbooks hitting the floor is loud in the silence. The mad search through the schoolwork yields the worn, bone badge he was looking for.
The reassurance of having his substitute badge in his hands only lasts as long as it takes to shove it against his chest.
What should happen is that the badge connects with his soul and he gets forcibly ejected from his body. What actually happens is this: nothing.
“No,” Ichigo says firmly. “No. We don’t have time for this. You are going to work.”
He pushes the badge against his chest once more. His firm words held no more weight to the badge than when he told them to Yoruichi when she decided that shacking up with Soi-Fong was more important than literally anything else that needed to be done. Unlike Yoruichi, the badge doesn’t respond by trying to beat his ass in.
A pit forms in Ichigo’s stomach. The worry that Kisuke might have seriously fucked it this time takes root.
A soft knock at his door has Ichigo scrambling back. He topples over as he frantically reaches for where his sword exactly isn’t. In the dark, on the floor, on his back, tangled in a blanket, surrounded by stationary, reaching for a sword that doesn’t exist and baring his teeth like a wild dog is how Yuzu finds him as she pushes open his door.
She blinks owlishly down at him. He blinks back at her adrenaline fading and body unconsciously relaxing as he looks at her. She is alive and so very young.
She was young when Yhwach purged her and Karin for tainting the Quincy line too.
“Um, Ichi-nii?” Yuzu asks. She peers into his room from around the door, pulling it open just enough that she can half-step in. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, and she is dressed in her pink pyjama set, the one with the cats on the shirt. “Is everything okay? I heard things…. banging around,” she finishes uncertainly. Dark as the room was, there was enough light through the window that she didn’t have to fight to see all his school supplies out and her older brother on the ground.
“Yuzu,” her name feels as if it’s punched out of his chest.
“Why are you on the ground? Are you hurt?” She asks. She flicks on the light switch and the room is cast in bright white light from the overhead. Ichigo instinctively flinches away from the light. It has probably been objectively too long since he has been under the brightness of LED lightbulbs. His eyes burn.
“Can you turn that off?” He asks instead of answering.
Yuzu frowns at him, most likely in an attempt to mirror Karin’s quiet concern but does as she’s told. She then takes another step into the room as if to say to him that she would not easily go away without a better attempt at assuring her that he was fine.
“I’m fine, Yuzu,” Ichigo says. Picking himself up off the ground, he drops his substitute pass as he does. She doesn’t move away from him as he steps forward, wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her into a tight hug. He presses his lips to the crown of her head, tucking her into him. He runs his hand over her hair and down her back, marvelling at his sister living and breathing in front of him. In his human body, everything is dialled up. The warmth of her body, the brush of her arms against his as she brings them up and around his waist to return the hug. He blinks away the burning in his eyes.
Years ago, he might have been tempted to blame the too-bright of lights from earlier, but now, after mourning her for so long he could accept the fact that the tears in this case were probably warranted.
“Ichi-nii,” she whispers into his chest. “Are you okay? Should I go get Dad?”
Goat-face would still be alive too. They are all still alive.
“No. Don’t do that,” he could barely handle seeing Yuzu, much less any more family right now. “It was just a nightmare. You should go back to bed.”
Slowly he makes himself drop his arms and step away from his little sister. She was still looking up at him with wide eyes.
“Go to bed, Yuzu,” he tells her more firmly. “I’m good now,” his throat starts feeling tight, so he steps back. Leaning down, Ichigo picks up the blanket off the floor and throws it onto the bed. He ignores his substitute badge clattering to the ground with the rest of the shit from his bag as it rolls off the blanket.
“Goodnight, Ichi-nii,” Yuzu tells him softly. Angling his head back to glance over his shoulder he sees her give him a small, tentative smile.
“Night.”
His bedroom door closes with a soft click.
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he rubs his face with his hands. He was too tired and too old for this shit. He couldn’t handle it alone. There was a reason Kisuke put in the effort to send both of them back instead of just Ichigo. The fact that he wasn’t already here meant that something was keeping him from coming to find Ichigo.
But the niggling fear in the back of his head was only growing louder and has been as he notices more oddities like textbooks that he only barely remembers using, and the book bag he was pretty sure he replaced when he started his last year.
Only one way but forward.
He pulls himself out of his hunch, reaches across his desk and grabs the phone.
It would have been a challenge to find a bad time to go back to as everyone was generally in agreement that any extra time is plenty in the fight against Yhwach. There was of course one exception to this.
Squinting against the light of the phone screen, the time reads just after midnight, and that today's date is approximately six months into the seventeen month period post-Mugetsu. The period of time when Ichigo didn’t have access to any of his powers.
Yeah. Kisuke fucked it big time.
Ichigo falls backwards and lets himself, for just a minute, appreciate the fact he is resting on a proper mattress and not a blanket in the middle of a barren desert. That was a positive here. So was the fact that his family was alive, and all his friends too. No one had been brutally killed by Quincies yet.
It all almost makes up for some of the glaring negatives, being a teenager, being not only powerless but unable to see the dead, and having the only other person that fully knows what’s going on right now, strapped to a chair in the Shinigami’s stupidest bondage gear while rotting in the darkest pit in their shittiest prison.
Kisuke and Sousuke planned this into the ground with Shunsui. They had about eight plans going for all possible starting points in the six-month radius they expected the time travel to take them back to. The fact that neither Kisuke nor Sousuke thought to make plans for outside that period goes to show just how desperate they were getting for an end to the war.
Granted, knowing the two masterminds, it's likely they both accounted for the possibility and kept the thought to themselves. Assholes, the both of them.
Still, the plans they worked on together won’t work anymore. Not when Ichigo can’t see or do shit and everyone still, justifiably, doesn’t trust Sousuke. That means Ichigo is going to have to come up with a new plan. Step one, get his powers back; step two, prison heist; step three, kill Yhwach. Really, what could go wrong?
Ichigo groans into his room as he covers his face with his hands yet again. There was no way this goes well.