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Fanfiction || Dead Man Walking 05
Title: Dead Man Walking
Fandom: Bleach
Main Character: Hitsugaya Toushirou/Shimizu Kouryuu
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General/Adventure/Suspense/Mystery
Warnings: Sporadic gore, language, author's inability to stay consistent with a single genre
Timeline: This story follows the manga's timeline. It takes place after the war with Aizen has begun.
Summary: Hitsugaya's disappearance left Seireitei with plenty of unanswered questions, but when a boy identical to the supposedly late taichou appears on Earth, to what lengths will everyone go to find out why? And when the answer does come, will it be too late?
~*~
“She said, ‘just go on to what you
Pretend is your life but
Please don't die on me’”
-Ready to Fall, Rise Against
~*~
Chapter Five
Backlash
~*~
Kouryuu didn’t know how long he’d been running. He only knew that his feet hurt, and his legs hurt, and his arms hurt, and his stomach hurt, and his neck hurt, and his head hurt, and everything just hurt. Somewhere in the back of his mind, something was telling him that this was obviously to be expected and that anything less after being slammed into a brick wall and then the cement respectively would be downright impossible, but that part of his mind was currently being overpowered by all of the hurt.
Damn, it really hurt!
The only thing keeping him going now was adrenaline. The moment that ran out, he’d be nothing more than mush on the pavement. As he just barely made out a street through his blurred vision, he turned the corner, looking back to see Nyoko follow him around the bend. Of course, she followed him. He had her by the wrist. But the sight of her wet, puffy eyes gave his strained body the push it needed to run another block.
“Kouryuu-kun!” she cried for the umpteenth time. “Kouryuu-kun! What’s going on? What happened to you? You’re bleeding! Just stop! We’re far enough already! Just stop, Kouryuu-kun!”
Like hell they were far enough! Nyoko-kun didn’t know; she couldn’t see it. That monster … and the orange-haired guy with the giant cleaver. They were straight out of a horror thriller for goodness’ sake! No. He could never run far enough away from that.
And that was when the world decided to prove him wrong. Half way down an empty alleyway, Nyoko-kun tripped over her own two feet. He hadn’t comprehended just how bad his condition was until he felt her weight on his back. It felt like he’d just been hit by a car. He couldn’t hold her, and he crumpled beneath her, eyes wide in shock and lungs heaving for air that just wouldn’t come.
Ahead of them, he could see an incoming bob of orange amongst the gray and black blurs. No. He struggled to pull himself back up, he had to get away, but something stopped him.
He looked up in disbelief as Nyoko reached around his shaky arms pulled him tightly to her chest. He pulled against her, but she only held him tighter, his chin knocking painfully against her shoulder as the bob of orange came closer and closer. She had tripped on purpose, he realized in his frenzy. This was all on purpose! She was going to get them both killed!
“Ny-!”
“Shh!” she hastily interrupted, her voice almost as frantic and hoarse as his own as she continued to hold him close despite all of his efforts to escape. “Please, Kouryuu! Please, don’t say anything!”
And so he didn’t. He only watched numbly as the high school kid and someone behind him finally caught up to them, body going limp when he realized there was nothing he could do. He could feel something prying him away from her as she carefully, reluctantly let go, and the last thing he saw before he finally lost consciousness was Nyoko-kun’s tear stained face.
~*~
“Rukia, I swear! It was him! It couldn’t have been anyone else!”
“It doesn’t work that way, Ichigo! How many times do I have to tell you? The dead don’t come back to life!”
“Well, then he either wasn’t dead or he isn’t alive,” the frustrated redhead grunted, reaching his limit with his raven haired companion. But Rukia wasn’t about to falter. If anything was true in this world, this was it. It was simply impossible.
“That makes even less sense,” she scolded him, also getting frustrated despite herself. It was just like Ichigo to take off the moment he got such a ridiculous idea into his head.
“Then you’ll just have to see for yourself!”
The shinigami snorted at his characteristic stubbornness. She had already known there was nothing she could do to change his mind. Why she even tried was a mystery she may never solve. She would just have to prove it to him. When they found this look-a-like, it would be obvious to the high school delinquent that it could not be the same person as the former Tenth Division captain.
Hitsugaya Toushirou was dead.
Before the topic could be discussed any further, Ichigo seemed to catch on to something, his brows furrowing as he increased his pace and raced ahead. Rukia pouted and followed right after him, Kon hitching a ride on her shoulder. But just as she caught up with him, Ichigo stopped, and she nearly ran into him. There in front of them was a girl tightly clutching a frantic boy in her arms. Neither could have been older than thirteen. Rukia gasped, and the noise only seemed to fuel Ichigo all the more.
The boy looked exactly like him.
It was simply impossible.
“I didn’t know what else to do!” the girl was wailing as Rukia slowly approached. Ichigo was crouched down in front of her, listening intently. “I just knew he couldn’t keep running or else he’d never stop!” Ichigo offered the girl his arms and began prying the boy out of her hysteric grip. He was dazed, gravely injured, and losing consciousness, if he hadn’t lost it already. Rukia still couldn’t believe it. “I don’t know who you are, but you have to help him! You just have to! I can’t, so you have to!”
The substitute shinigami laid the boy out on the sidewalk, and Rukia quickly understood. In his condition, he wouldn’t even make it to the clinic. She’d have to seal the worst of his wounds right here. As she dropped down beside him and began, Ichigo turned back to the girl and patted her on the head. “Don’t worry. We’re the good guys; we just want to help. Rukia knows what she’s doing. We’ll have your boyfriend fixed up in no time.”
The beet-red blush that overwhelmed her features was hard to miss. “B-boyfriend?” she stuttered before hastily amending herself. “Y-yes! Yes! So you have to help him no matter what! You have to help him for me!”
“Aha! Liar!” cried a voice before a small, stuffed lion jumped out from behind Rukia. The girl, even after all of her screaming and crying, was struck dumb at the sight. “Why would Toushirou choose you when he’s got his goddess of a lieutenant and her two beau-” Rukia promptly pounded it into the ground.
“Ignore him,” she grunted as if talking stuffed animals were an everyday occurrence. “Ichigo, I took care of the head wound. He should be able to make it now. We can’t afford to stay here any longer or we may be seen.”
“Right,” Ichigo nodded, the epitome of seriousness as he bent down to pick up the boy, cradling him bridal style.
Rukia had sealed his head wound first, the obvious choice, but even without the blatant injury and the dried blood dyeing his hair a deep, dark red, she could barely stand to see him this way. This boy couldn’t be Hitsugaya-taichou; he couldn’t. But they looked so alike that the sight brought shivers down her spine. Hitsugaya-taichou should never have looked so vulnerable.
When the girl stood up to follow, she forced the thought from her mind and pulled out her kikanshinki. “Oi, girl. I’m sure you have a lot of questions, ne? Just look over here and-”
“I’ve seen MIB,” the girl suddenly piped up, shielding her eyes. “I’m not looking at that thing.”
A small smile twitched at the edges of Ichigo’s lips when he saw Rukia’s dumbfounded expression. “MIB…?”
“C’mon, Rukia,” he shook his head, not bothering to explain. “Not today. Just this once.”
“What are you talking about? This is standard procedure. If I don’t, then-”
“What about any of this is standard?” he snorted, still supporting the Hitsugaya look-a-like in his arms. “Besides, she’s his girlfriend, right? Maybe she can tell us what’s going on.”
At the girl’s vigorous nodding, Rukia sighed and finally replaced the memory-erasing device within her Chappie backpack. “Just this once,” she consented grudgingly. “But if anything happens later… It doesn’t matter. For now let’s get him to the clinic.”
“Um… if we’re going somewhere else now, you should probably call his house. If he doesn’t come home, Akane-san will start a killing spree until she finds him.”
“Well, would you look at that. She’s already helping out,” Ichigo smirked. “Apparently, Toushirou here has found himself a family.”
“She could have told us that even if we had erased her memory,” Rukia countered.
“Aha!” the girl pointed at the Thirteenth Division shinigami accusingly. “I knew it!”
Ichigo’s smirk cracked itself just a bit wider; Rukia was stumped again. Apparently, she still had a lot to learn about the living world, even after all this time. And while she watched Ichigo talking to that amazing, little girl who was still following them even after watching Rukia heal her friend within minutes before squashing a talking stuffed animal, she couldn’t help but feel the tiniest bit of hope begin to swell within her gut. It was impossible, but he really did look exactly like Hitsugaya-taichou. Even if they weren’t the same person, maybe they were connected.
Could she really begin to hope that the fallen taichou would rise again?
“So what’s your name, kid?” Ichigo asked.
“Nyoko,” she said after a moment. “And I wish you’d stop calling him Toushirou. You must’ve made a mistake. His name is Kouryuu.”
Rukia paused, disbelieving shock embracing her features for only a moment before she forced it aside and caught up with the other two. Kouryuu … huh?
Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t so impossible after all.
~*~
Blood. Everywhere there was blood. And darkness. That was the worst part. The darkness.
Never before had the dark hurt so much.
But that was when he saw it. Out of the corner of his blurred peripheral vision, he could see something that wasn’t dark. It was a very, very different color, a color that he knew all too well. A familiar shade of pink; to be specific, a pink scarf. One that was also covered in blood.
It took several seconds for his battered mind to comprehend this, but when it did, all of the darkness immediately faded away. A world of light met him once again, and he knew that under no circumstances could he afford to leave it. He still had a job to do, and he would do it. He had to.
Matsumoto was counting on him.
It still hurt. Everything still hurt, but he had to get up. If he stayed here any longer … he would never get up.
Reaching out his hand with every last bit of his meager energy, he pushed against the sticky, blood-stained earth and tried to pull himself up. A taichou’s place was not on the ground, dammit. But he knew right away that the weight he was trying to lift was a great deal heavier than his own. Matsumoto was on top of him. Her added weight pinned him down as he realized he just didn’t have the power to save them both. He didn’t even have the power to save her.
They were going to die here.
And it was all his fault.
Something came down on his outstretched arm. Hard. It hurt like hell and he was sure it was broken, but he didn’t have the voice to cry out any more. The most he could do was raise his head the slightest fraction, his unfocused eyes landing on first the sandal which had found its home atop his arm, then the white uniform that signified everything he hated, and finally the gentle smile that killed him every time he laid his eyes on it.
“And here I thought you had learned your lesson.”
Aizen Sousuke looked down on him, no where near the innocent, trustworthy man he had once thought him to be. The smile twisted into an almost fatherly smirk. It was revolting.
“Challenge me once, and I spare you. Challenge me twice, and you’re simply not worth sparing,” the man scolded lightly. He stared defiantly back, unwilling to give Aizen even the slightest satisfaction of his own will. But, apparently, this was exactly what the cruel mastermind wanted. He couldn’t comprehend it as he was. He only knew that something was very, very wrong. “But even the unworthy can be used, isn’t that right, Gin?”
Ichimaru Gin grinned widely, his form illuminated by the glinting of his blood-stained blade. Blood, he realized, that was still leaking out of his mutilated body. Blood, he knew, that also belonged to the woman above him, who had given herself up only to have him fail her yet again. “O’course, Aizen,” he replied easily, playing with his superior’s name by elongating the first syllable. “Whatcha plannin’ on usin’ the little taichou for? Sure, he’s cute, but he’s still a brat, ya know?”
“Well, he always has been considered a prodigy. Perhaps he can help us with a little question I’ve wanted answered for some time now.” At this, he crouched down, peering steely into his prey’s blank, green orbs. “After all, he’s proven to be a great deal of help to us already,” he smirked knowingly. “Haven’t you, Hitsugaya-kun?”
The consciousness he had been trying so desperately to cling to for so long was now quickly beginning to fade, and the last thing he saw before he finally couldn’t hold on any longer was Matsumoto’s pale, listless body as he was dragged out from under it.
Fandom: Bleach
Main Character: Hitsugaya Toushirou/Shimizu Kouryuu
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General/Adventure/Suspense/Mystery
Warnings: Sporadic gore, language, author's inability to stay consistent with a single genre
Timeline: This story follows the manga's timeline. It takes place after the war with Aizen has begun.
Summary: Hitsugaya's disappearance left Seireitei with plenty of unanswered questions, but when a boy identical to the supposedly late taichou appears on Earth, to what lengths will everyone go to find out why? And when the answer does come, will it be too late?
“She said, ‘just go on to what you
Pretend is your life but
Please don't die on me’”
-Ready to Fall, Rise Against
~*~
Chapter Five
Backlash
~*~
Kouryuu didn’t know how long he’d been running. He only knew that his feet hurt, and his legs hurt, and his arms hurt, and his stomach hurt, and his neck hurt, and his head hurt, and everything just hurt. Somewhere in the back of his mind, something was telling him that this was obviously to be expected and that anything less after being slammed into a brick wall and then the cement respectively would be downright impossible, but that part of his mind was currently being overpowered by all of the hurt.
Damn, it really hurt!
The only thing keeping him going now was adrenaline. The moment that ran out, he’d be nothing more than mush on the pavement. As he just barely made out a street through his blurred vision, he turned the corner, looking back to see Nyoko follow him around the bend. Of course, she followed him. He had her by the wrist. But the sight of her wet, puffy eyes gave his strained body the push it needed to run another block.
“Kouryuu-kun!” she cried for the umpteenth time. “Kouryuu-kun! What’s going on? What happened to you? You’re bleeding! Just stop! We’re far enough already! Just stop, Kouryuu-kun!”
Like hell they were far enough! Nyoko-kun didn’t know; she couldn’t see it. That monster … and the orange-haired guy with the giant cleaver. They were straight out of a horror thriller for goodness’ sake! No. He could never run far enough away from that.
And that was when the world decided to prove him wrong. Half way down an empty alleyway, Nyoko-kun tripped over her own two feet. He hadn’t comprehended just how bad his condition was until he felt her weight on his back. It felt like he’d just been hit by a car. He couldn’t hold her, and he crumpled beneath her, eyes wide in shock and lungs heaving for air that just wouldn’t come.
Ahead of them, he could see an incoming bob of orange amongst the gray and black blurs. No. He struggled to pull himself back up, he had to get away, but something stopped him.
He looked up in disbelief as Nyoko reached around his shaky arms pulled him tightly to her chest. He pulled against her, but she only held him tighter, his chin knocking painfully against her shoulder as the bob of orange came closer and closer. She had tripped on purpose, he realized in his frenzy. This was all on purpose! She was going to get them both killed!
“Ny-!”
“Shh!” she hastily interrupted, her voice almost as frantic and hoarse as his own as she continued to hold him close despite all of his efforts to escape. “Please, Kouryuu! Please, don’t say anything!”
And so he didn’t. He only watched numbly as the high school kid and someone behind him finally caught up to them, body going limp when he realized there was nothing he could do. He could feel something prying him away from her as she carefully, reluctantly let go, and the last thing he saw before he finally lost consciousness was Nyoko-kun’s tear stained face.
“Rukia, I swear! It was him! It couldn’t have been anyone else!”
“It doesn’t work that way, Ichigo! How many times do I have to tell you? The dead don’t come back to life!”
“Well, then he either wasn’t dead or he isn’t alive,” the frustrated redhead grunted, reaching his limit with his raven haired companion. But Rukia wasn’t about to falter. If anything was true in this world, this was it. It was simply impossible.
“That makes even less sense,” she scolded him, also getting frustrated despite herself. It was just like Ichigo to take off the moment he got such a ridiculous idea into his head.
“Then you’ll just have to see for yourself!”
The shinigami snorted at his characteristic stubbornness. She had already known there was nothing she could do to change his mind. Why she even tried was a mystery she may never solve. She would just have to prove it to him. When they found this look-a-like, it would be obvious to the high school delinquent that it could not be the same person as the former Tenth Division captain.
Hitsugaya Toushirou was dead.
Before the topic could be discussed any further, Ichigo seemed to catch on to something, his brows furrowing as he increased his pace and raced ahead. Rukia pouted and followed right after him, Kon hitching a ride on her shoulder. But just as she caught up with him, Ichigo stopped, and she nearly ran into him. There in front of them was a girl tightly clutching a frantic boy in her arms. Neither could have been older than thirteen. Rukia gasped, and the noise only seemed to fuel Ichigo all the more.
The boy looked exactly like him.
It was simply impossible.
“I didn’t know what else to do!” the girl was wailing as Rukia slowly approached. Ichigo was crouched down in front of her, listening intently. “I just knew he couldn’t keep running or else he’d never stop!” Ichigo offered the girl his arms and began prying the boy out of her hysteric grip. He was dazed, gravely injured, and losing consciousness, if he hadn’t lost it already. Rukia still couldn’t believe it. “I don’t know who you are, but you have to help him! You just have to! I can’t, so you have to!”
The substitute shinigami laid the boy out on the sidewalk, and Rukia quickly understood. In his condition, he wouldn’t even make it to the clinic. She’d have to seal the worst of his wounds right here. As she dropped down beside him and began, Ichigo turned back to the girl and patted her on the head. “Don’t worry. We’re the good guys; we just want to help. Rukia knows what she’s doing. We’ll have your boyfriend fixed up in no time.”
The beet-red blush that overwhelmed her features was hard to miss. “B-boyfriend?” she stuttered before hastily amending herself. “Y-yes! Yes! So you have to help him no matter what! You have to help him for me!”
“Aha! Liar!” cried a voice before a small, stuffed lion jumped out from behind Rukia. The girl, even after all of her screaming and crying, was struck dumb at the sight. “Why would Toushirou choose you when he’s got his goddess of a lieutenant and her two beau-” Rukia promptly pounded it into the ground.
“Ignore him,” she grunted as if talking stuffed animals were an everyday occurrence. “Ichigo, I took care of the head wound. He should be able to make it now. We can’t afford to stay here any longer or we may be seen.”
“Right,” Ichigo nodded, the epitome of seriousness as he bent down to pick up the boy, cradling him bridal style.
Rukia had sealed his head wound first, the obvious choice, but even without the blatant injury and the dried blood dyeing his hair a deep, dark red, she could barely stand to see him this way. This boy couldn’t be Hitsugaya-taichou; he couldn’t. But they looked so alike that the sight brought shivers down her spine. Hitsugaya-taichou should never have looked so vulnerable.
When the girl stood up to follow, she forced the thought from her mind and pulled out her kikanshinki. “Oi, girl. I’m sure you have a lot of questions, ne? Just look over here and-”
“I’ve seen MIB,” the girl suddenly piped up, shielding her eyes. “I’m not looking at that thing.”
A small smile twitched at the edges of Ichigo’s lips when he saw Rukia’s dumbfounded expression. “MIB…?”
“C’mon, Rukia,” he shook his head, not bothering to explain. “Not today. Just this once.”
“What are you talking about? This is standard procedure. If I don’t, then-”
“What about any of this is standard?” he snorted, still supporting the Hitsugaya look-a-like in his arms. “Besides, she’s his girlfriend, right? Maybe she can tell us what’s going on.”
At the girl’s vigorous nodding, Rukia sighed and finally replaced the memory-erasing device within her Chappie backpack. “Just this once,” she consented grudgingly. “But if anything happens later… It doesn’t matter. For now let’s get him to the clinic.”
“Um… if we’re going somewhere else now, you should probably call his house. If he doesn’t come home, Akane-san will start a killing spree until she finds him.”
“Well, would you look at that. She’s already helping out,” Ichigo smirked. “Apparently, Toushirou here has found himself a family.”
“She could have told us that even if we had erased her memory,” Rukia countered.
“Aha!” the girl pointed at the Thirteenth Division shinigami accusingly. “I knew it!”
Ichigo’s smirk cracked itself just a bit wider; Rukia was stumped again. Apparently, she still had a lot to learn about the living world, even after all this time. And while she watched Ichigo talking to that amazing, little girl who was still following them even after watching Rukia heal her friend within minutes before squashing a talking stuffed animal, she couldn’t help but feel the tiniest bit of hope begin to swell within her gut. It was impossible, but he really did look exactly like Hitsugaya-taichou. Even if they weren’t the same person, maybe they were connected.
Could she really begin to hope that the fallen taichou would rise again?
“So what’s your name, kid?” Ichigo asked.
“Nyoko,” she said after a moment. “And I wish you’d stop calling him Toushirou. You must’ve made a mistake. His name is Kouryuu.”
Rukia paused, disbelieving shock embracing her features for only a moment before she forced it aside and caught up with the other two. Kouryuu … huh?
Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t so impossible after all.
Blood. Everywhere there was blood. And darkness. That was the worst part. The darkness.
Never before had the dark hurt so much.
But that was when he saw it. Out of the corner of his blurred peripheral vision, he could see something that wasn’t dark. It was a very, very different color, a color that he knew all too well. A familiar shade of pink; to be specific, a pink scarf. One that was also covered in blood.
It took several seconds for his battered mind to comprehend this, but when it did, all of the darkness immediately faded away. A world of light met him once again, and he knew that under no circumstances could he afford to leave it. He still had a job to do, and he would do it. He had to.
Matsumoto was counting on him.
It still hurt. Everything still hurt, but he had to get up. If he stayed here any longer … he would never get up.
Reaching out his hand with every last bit of his meager energy, he pushed against the sticky, blood-stained earth and tried to pull himself up. A taichou’s place was not on the ground, dammit. But he knew right away that the weight he was trying to lift was a great deal heavier than his own. Matsumoto was on top of him. Her added weight pinned him down as he realized he just didn’t have the power to save them both. He didn’t even have the power to save her.
They were going to die here.
And it was all his fault.
Something came down on his outstretched arm. Hard. It hurt like hell and he was sure it was broken, but he didn’t have the voice to cry out any more. The most he could do was raise his head the slightest fraction, his unfocused eyes landing on first the sandal which had found its home atop his arm, then the white uniform that signified everything he hated, and finally the gentle smile that killed him every time he laid his eyes on it.
“And here I thought you had learned your lesson.”
Aizen Sousuke looked down on him, no where near the innocent, trustworthy man he had once thought him to be. The smile twisted into an almost fatherly smirk. It was revolting.
“Challenge me once, and I spare you. Challenge me twice, and you’re simply not worth sparing,” the man scolded lightly. He stared defiantly back, unwilling to give Aizen even the slightest satisfaction of his own will. But, apparently, this was exactly what the cruel mastermind wanted. He couldn’t comprehend it as he was. He only knew that something was very, very wrong. “But even the unworthy can be used, isn’t that right, Gin?”
Ichimaru Gin grinned widely, his form illuminated by the glinting of his blood-stained blade. Blood, he realized, that was still leaking out of his mutilated body. Blood, he knew, that also belonged to the woman above him, who had given herself up only to have him fail her yet again. “O’course, Aizen,” he replied easily, playing with his superior’s name by elongating the first syllable. “Whatcha plannin’ on usin’ the little taichou for? Sure, he’s cute, but he’s still a brat, ya know?”
“Well, he always has been considered a prodigy. Perhaps he can help us with a little question I’ve wanted answered for some time now.” At this, he crouched down, peering steely into his prey’s blank, green orbs. “After all, he’s proven to be a great deal of help to us already,” he smirked knowingly. “Haven’t you, Hitsugaya-kun?”
The consciousness he had been trying so desperately to cling to for so long was now quickly beginning to fade, and the last thing he saw before he finally couldn’t hold on any longer was Matsumoto’s pale, listless body as he was dragged out from under it.