Will there come a time when I don't want to write no-powers Ichigo? Hell no. Will there come a time when I'm not upset about Kubo acting like the winter war had no effect on our favorite fantastic human four? Hell fucking no!

Quick warnings for this chapter- mentions/descriptions of panic attacks, nudity?, depression, brief mentions of suicide though it never actually happens, and then, because it's bleach, violence. (This is currently un-beta'd. I'll go through it soon.)

Thanks! Please enjoy!

-O-

They're supposed to be writing coming-of-age essays. Yeah fucking right- he never had time to come of age, so to speak. The world grabbed him by his neck and said, "Grow. Now."

This topic, though, is something he's familiar with. The teacher is having them write about frustration, and if he knows one thing in his life, it's that. She says to write about petty things- the frustration of not having enough time to have fun, of having to find work, the frustration of a parent not letting go. He's been there, done that. He had his work, he had his fun, he had his parent. Now there's nothing left of it all- not even his father. His father is still there, but it's different now. It's more like two people living in the same house than a father-son relationship now more than ever before. Not to say they haven't tried.

Kurosaki Ichigo. Seventeen. Ex-substitute soul reaper.

Some idiot in the desk over moans about ex's. Oh, he moans, and drags out long stories about finding things left behind- oh he's so broken hearted! Ichigo has the one big fat Ex himself, but he had that stripped from him. They hadn't wanted him to go, and he hadn't wanted to go either. All in all, it was more like death than a bad break up. Separation, maybe. He wasn't sure how to describe it.

Yeah, sure, your ex makes it awkward. You don't want to go to your buddy's house for a sleepover because he's doing her now- whatever. He can't spend the night with anyone now. It's always something- the nightmares, the knee-jerk reaction when someone touches him in his sleep, the way he just can't sleep because he's not tired yet. He's not awake, he's not sleepy, he's exhausted- he's nothing.

His "ex" leaves nothing in its wake.

That's frustration. It's bitterness, too, which is something that he finds can come hand in hand with the former emotion. There's more to it, though. It goes a lot deeper than big ex's and the 'I-never-got-to-be-a-kid' pain. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it were just that.

He can't stand the way they stare. In the gym locker room, they look at his back and torso and just watch as he moves, wondering- silent. No one has the courage to ask. The staff hears of the rumors and the teacher asks him once, What are the scars from?

War. So much war. War where he saved a woman from an unjust death, war where he fought his own, war where he raised a blade against hollows, and the war. The war where he lost it all.

Don't touch me.

He's a modern-day martyr, burnt up at the stake. They don't know that they had their lives on the line, or that he's what's stood between them and death so many times. They just don't know. They think he's another dumb punk kid.

That's how its always been, yeah, but now it's worse. No one is there to make it better. The work doesn't distract him because it's gone. It would be so satisfying to have come back from the war with his sword still intact, so that even though they didn't know about it, the hollows he'd fight in days to come would. He's just as helpless as them, now. Can't even see a ghost.

This isn't his world.

"I feel like I've been sent to an alternate dimension." He tells her. She can't hear him- she's probably doing paperwork in Soul Society. He wonders if she's eaten lately- she's always been too obsessed with getting things done and not careful enough about herself. "It's- fuck. It's so damn annoying. I wanna go home, Rukia. I just want to go home."

But he is home, and he's never felt so homesick in his entire life.

Watch me unfold, He thinks. Watch me burn like you were supposed to.

The empty air holds no reply for his thoughts of his words. His desperate please and confessions are met by nothing but silence.

-O-

He doesn't like the way clothes feel anymore. They're too oddly bound about him. He likes being a spirit outside of his own body, with clothes that are made of the atmosphere- clothes that fit his body exactly. He lounges in his underwear alone up in his room on the weekends and thinks about going out, but it's too much of a pain. He'll do push-ups until he can't move anymore, and when he hits that point he'll do sit-ups instead. The scar across his chest and stomach slides uneasily with the rest of his skin, lighting up with tiny sparks of phantom pain.

Good. He thinks. The pain lets him know he's alive.

Until it doesn't.

"So that brings us to the re-establishment of Hong Kong," The teacher says. "China took repossession of it in…" She turns. "Kurosaki, are you okay?"

He's not okay. He's bent over his desk and drenched with sweat, hand pressed hard to his chest. It's gone. He tells himself. The hole is gone, get a grip! But he can feel it there, the edges crisp with the burn from Ulquiorra's cero. He can't breath with that huge hole punched through him. He can feel his hollow bubbling up his throat with liquefied white bone, ready to take him over.

"Kurosaki?"

It's not real! He screams at himself. It's over! It's over now!

It is over, isn't it? He wonders what he's going to do with his life now.

"Kurosaki?"

Ishida stands and quickly makes his way over to Ichigo's side, sliding under his arm to help him stand. Ichigo still can't breath, but he awkwardly hobbles out of the room with the quincy as his crutch and anchor to the real world. No one tries to stop them from leaving.

"It happens to me, too." Ishida says quietly. "Sometimes I can't move my hand. That espada wasn't messing around, was he?"

"No." He says, grim. "And neither was my hollow when it killed him."

Ishida's good hand flinches, heading towards his stomach before he can stop the motion. He knows Ichigo sees, but tries to cover up the motion by rubbing at his neck anyway. "Yeah…"

I'm seventeen. Ichigo thinks. Way too young to be having my mid-life crisis.

You're right. That voice- so much like his hollow- replies. It's not a mid-life crisis. This is just the feeling of your life ending.

How can he argue with that?

-O-

It's odd to him that Karin is one of the only people in the entire world who seems to understand. She answers the door on the weekends and tells his friends that he's out, or that he's busy, or that he's in trouble again. She lets him know they've stopped by and that she turned them away, even though he'd never asked her to make excuses for him. She just knows that he can't be with other people the way he is. He needs time to rebuild himself, if possible.

She knows he doesn't like the way his clothes feel, so she'll sit out in the hall with her back to the door and talk while he makes himself sick doing crunches.

"They're all getting annoyed with me." She says flatly. "I kind of want to play a big prank on all of them and convince them that you've moved out. But then, I don't want them climbing up through your window looking for you like the old man used to."

He doesn't reply, but she knows he agrees with him, somehow.

"… Everyone keeps saying you're going to have to come out of your room and deal with the world at some point." She says. "But I don't see the problem with staying in there. Everyone else in the world is an idiot."

He almost smiles at that. Almost.

"She'd agree with that one, don't you think?"

The smile fades. He's not upset with her for bringing that up. He likes that she's not afraid to, and it keeps him sane to hear someone else talk about Rukia. If it wasn't for Karin, he might have begun to think he'd gone crazy- that the shinigami girl had never existed at all.

"She never really loved anyone like she loved you."

I never really loved anyone like I loved her.

"She'll come back." Karin whispers. "You'll see."

Finally, he speaks. He's done with the exercise. He'd been up all night, and now it's time for a nap that will last until dinnertime. "Don't count on it." He climbs into bed and is glad that she doesn't reply. They both know she'll try again in another day.

He wonders when his apatite will come back as he drifts to sleep.

-O-

It's not just that Rukia's gone. Even if she were there, at that very moment, he wouldn't be able to see her. And even though he knows she can take care of herself, and that she's strong, and that she doesn't need him he knows that if something were to happen to her, he wouldn't be able to do a thing. If right now, this very moment, she was once again put on the execution block- even if he could see her there- he'd have to sit still and do nothing.

Powerless. It's the second shittiest feeling in the whole world- coming directly in place behind that damn homesickness he feels for a life that's not his anymore.

It doesn't make sense to wish things had gone different. If he hadn't lost his powers Aizen would have won, and then he would have died- Rukia, too, and Renji, and his sisters, and dad, and Chad, and Ishida, and Inoue … all of them. His powers were worth less than one of those lives, never mind all of them scaled in together.

And yet he still wonders what else could have been done. Why it had to be him the not-even-real-death-god human brat that had mattered as much to Soul Society as loose change once. Something inside of his has died, and they're all about death, aren't they? So why don't they take charge?

During the night it's so quiet. Too quiet. All he can hear is his breath; in, out, in, out, and the stutter in between when he starts to speed up without meaning to. The soft sound of his breathing evening out before it starts up quick again… and then silence.

His hollow used to talk to him in times like these. Back then he found it unnerving; that off-kilter voice tittering on about what he would have done during the day. He talked about how he wouldn't have let that kid's comment slide, and about how he would have jumped out of the window, what he would have done on the way home, this and that. Ichigo would argue back, tiredly, that they couldn't do that, they'd get in trouble, blah-blah-blah… But it was something to do when he couldn't sleep.

Now his mind is consumed by thoughts of what his hollow would have done, what he would have said he would have done- dumb things like that. He wonders if his hollow is dead now that there's not place for that kind of power in his body. He thinks about the landscape of his mind, with all the tilted buildings. He wonders if it flooded. Do hollows need air to breath? His certainly must have drowned- he can't see it being quiet any other way.

Hey… He tries. You there?

He feels stupid all over again. Of course he's not there. And if he had been, he wouldn't have answered out of spite, too. The Hollow would have saved that silent call for later, so that when Ichigo was saying he didn't want him around he could say something about how that's not the way it was so many days ago or whatever.

He wants to know for sure. The only bait big enough to lure his hollow out, though, is his body. And even though he knows the hollow is gone, he can't make himself shout that it can take control in his mind. Old habits die hard.

Wouldn't that be something, though? His big reunion with Soul Society, all because he'd been stupid enough to give in to his hollow. He wonders, to himself in the silence- which is still very oppressing- if they'd kill him or what. It seems like everything he's done before now doesn't matter anymore. Like he said- that part of his life is over.

No matter how badly he wants it not to be.

-O-

Some days it's almost too much. Life is so horribly stale and mundane and he just wants to scream. I lived! I don't belong here! Don't you people know what I've done?! He has bigger things to worry about than some stupid test- he has bad guys to kill and people to save.

He hates the popular American comic Superman. He hates how Clark Kent is the disguise, and Superman is the real deal. He hates it because that's how he used to be.

How would Clark Kent react if Superman died?

Orihime smiles with a sort of gentle malice he's noticed has barely grown on her during her time in Hueco Mundo. Kindly, and softly, she says, "I think he'd jump off a building." A beat goes by and she realizes what she says, sadly staring at the ground. "Not… not necessarily to kill himself. He'd do it to see if he could fly."

That one makes sense.

Somehow, though, it doesn't come out as the explanation he wants it to be when his father is patching up his shredded knuckles. He wants to say he'd forgotten what it felt like to have human strength- that he'd hit the wall thinking the debris would distract the gang in their fight while he took out the front, that it was what he always used to do with the hollows. But it doesn't sound right, no matter how he twists it in his head, until what Inoue says comes back into mind.

"Why?" His father asks. He does not demand an answer. He just wants to know.

"Because," Ichigo answers, and like Orihime, does not think through what it will sound like outside of his head when he says, "You know. It's… just. If Superman died and it was just Clark Kent, he'd jump off a building."

His father pauses.

"… Shit." Ichigo curses and tries to back-peddle. "Shit. No, that's not-"

"Just remember, son." Isshin says quietly. "You were a brother, a son, and a friend long before you were a hero, and we loved you all just as much then."

He can't find anything to say to that. Because that's not the point. He knows they all love him just as much as they did before. The thing is, he doesn't love himself like he did when he was a Soul Reaper. He doesn't love living like he did back then.

He's the one who has to live this way. Not them.

-O-

He gets into a fight in the middle of class one day. The kid has it coming. He's been creeping all over Orihime since day one, despite Ishida blocking him off and taking place as Orihime's shield time and time again. Even Chad, who is strong and imposing if anyone ever was, can't seem to stop the idiot in his tracks. Orihime was sadly used to the sexual harassment, and she takes it all in stride and managed to get through with Tatsuki's revenge, but this is different. The boy grabs her while she's stuck in a daydream about that past- one clammy palm tightening like claws around her arm.

She panics. She lets out a high scream and crumbled on the ground, hands over her head, trembling. "I'm sorry!" She yells. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" She chokes and presses her head into her knees harder, crying but pretending she's okay.

His first thought when these sorts of things used to happen was what did they do to her? Now, however, it's a simple reality they all must live with. Ishida and Chad rush to be her support, Ishida with words and Chad with his warm torso and soft hands. The rest of the class watches on, all with wide eyes.

Usually when someone touches Inoue, it is Tatsuki who stands to pass judgement on the miserable soul of the offender. Ichigo beats her to it this time. He snaps- that voice and those tears, the way she holds her hands over her head- it's just like Hueco Mundo.

He stands and walks forcefully forward, absent-mindedly knocking desks out of his way until he is standing before the offending boy.

He reaches up high behind his back to grab his sword…

… And grasps at the empty air.

His heart gives a pang and he grinds his teeth together. "Fuck." He whispers, just before he draws back a fist to smash in the kid's face.

It's a blur, suddenly. He's not sure where he is. Orihime is still crying, somewhere, and he needs to find Rukia. He hits the teen again, forgetting why, even when he's up on top of the boy and pounding away. Red flecks his face, and he sees Ulquiorra's cero. He can feel his hollow screaming at him, demanding control, he can feel the black blood of the monster creeping into his eyes-

"Ichigo! STOP!"

A hand on his shoulder stalls him.

It is not Ishida pulling him back from overkill this time, but Tatsuki, who stares at him for a good long while in what is part understanding and part estrangement.

"That's enough." She says.

He turns back and sees the kid's out. His fists are bloody and the kid's nose is broken, not to mention the kid's lips are shredded and three front teeth are gone. He stumbles back off of the teen like he's been burned and stares.

"It's over now." Tatsuki reminds him. "It's done."

The fight? He wonders. Or the war?

His father comes to collect him later.

"Clark Kent wouldn't jump." He say as they drive home. "He'd do a report on Superman's death and then move on with his life."

How would you know? He thinks. You gave up your life as a captain to be human. You don't understand. Even though, really, his father probably does understand, and he knows it, too.

"He'd be Clark Kent." Isshin reaffirms.

"You're wrong."

"Oh?"

He nods, surely. "He wouldn't go on being Clark Kent." Ichigo says. "He'd be looking for Superman."

There is nothing Isshin can say to that. He knows it's true.

They get home much sooner than Ichigo had hoped. He doesn't want to be alone in the silence of his room again- even if he doesn't want to hear his father give him the 'it'll-get-better' talk anymore. He wants to just sit in the stupid car and try to detect the cigarette smoke smell left behind from his father's early days.

"Then look, son."

He jumps, startled out of his revere. "W-what?"

"Look for yourself. Just don't… don't keep jumping off of buildings. She'll be pissed at you if you die."

He thinks, for a second. "Yeah… yeah she would be."

Somewhere deep, deep inside of him, he can hear his hollow's voice, even if it does gurgle oddly like he's underwater. She's not the only one.

-Fin-